


Shelter

by iliveatlast



Series: Shiner-verse [5]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Found Family, Internalized Homophobia, Past Child Abuse, Past Sexual Abuse, Young Daryl Dixon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 60,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24365545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iliveatlast/pseuds/iliveatlast
Summary: After Terminus, there has to be somewhere they can be safe. Maybe north, maybe not. But somewhere, there's a place where Daryl can make himself a life.There has to be.Season 5, Shiner-verse.
Series: Shiner-verse [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1743010
Comments: 35
Kudos: 69





	1. No Sanctuary

**Author's Note:**

> All right - on to Season 5!

When Daryl wakes up in the train car, for a minute he forgets everything.   
  
It's like the storage unit they stayed in over the long winter - all of them piled on top of each other, smelling like blood and other people's sweat and damp, and someone is always up before him. For a moment, he thinks he's there - almost hears the low rumble of Hershel's voice, the quiet patter of Carol's feet as she gets up, puts together whatever pathetic breakfast she can gather up.   
  
But then he hears, in the distance, the faint sound of someone screaming, and he remembers everything. 

When he sits up, Maggie is up too. So is Rick. Everyone else is starting to stir too - waking up like him, slow then all at once.   
  
"All right," Rick says. "Let's go."  
  
They get to work. There's lots to do - the know they're weapons and they know what they need. Anything possible is repurposed, belts and zippers and shoelaces. Rick is using Hershel's watch chain to saw away at the wall.   
  
"Hey," Maggie says, sliding over next to him. He's keeping watch out of the side of the door, the buttons from his jacket clenched between his fingers. He sharpens them on the side of the door as he watches. He knew Maggie'd be coming for him. He doesn't take his eyes off of the whole. She starts working next to him - sharpening something. They're all sharpening something.   
  
"Hey," he says back.   
  
"Rick said - Rick said you were with Beth."  
  
"For a while," he mutters. "She - we got out together."  
  
"And - Rick said -" Maggie swallows. He can hear it even over the grinding sounds everybody else is making.   
  
"She got snatched," Daryl says. "She - we were runnin', but I shouldn't a let her go first. I saw who took her, but I couldn't keep up."  
  
"Who?"  
  
"Black car. White cross on the back." Daryl's biting his lip, and he finally risks a glance at Maggie. Her eyes are fixed on her work, but he sees a tear spill over. She wipes it away.   
  
"But - she's alive?"  
  
She was alive four days ago, Daryl thinks. But he just nods, once. "Yeah. She's alive."  
  
He thinks Maggie might say something else to him, might try to touch him, but she doesn't get the chance because then the fuckers from Terminus are coming, and he whistles up Rick. Everybody stops moving.   
  
"Four a them," Daryl mutters, and Rick nods.   
  
"You know what to do, he says, the other ranging themselves up against the door. "Eyes first, then throats."  
  
Of course it's not that easy. 

* * *

When the smoke grenade goes off, it knocks Daryl over. Everything around him is thick smoke and he feels someone grabbing at him. It's his dad. Woodbury took Glenn and Maggie and they've got to get them back, they set off the smoke grenade but his dad is there and he grabs him and Daryl's ears are ringing and his eyes, he can't get away, his dad - 

" - not the kid, Mom said -"  
  
"Whatever, he's not a little kid or something, not like the other one, he's -"  
  
" - veal, come on, doncha like veal -"

Someone's throwing him to the ground and his eyes are heavy and stinging when he opens them. He can't see right - it's all blurry but he can see the train car before someone hoists him up again and drags him away. 

The room they enter is echoing and gray and smells like blood and fear. Someone drops him down like a sack of potatoes and he groans. That's when he realizes he's wearing a gag.

" - fucker kicked me, oughta -"  
  
"Can't handle a kid now?"  
  
" - ain't no kid, fuckin' wildcat, shit - my knee -"  
  
It's Daryl, Rick, Glenn, and Bob. Lined up, gagged and bound. Daryl's in between Glenn and Rick. He feels Glenn nudging against him.   
  
Terminus. He's at Terminus. Not Woodbury. His dad is dead and rotting.   
  
And they're going to get out of here. 

There's others there too, all of them zip tied hand and foot. He tries to remember what Merle said about zip ties. Cops shouldn't use them because they were so easy to break. You could snap them or cut them but there was something else, something about picking them - 

But he hasn't seen Merle since he was thirteen. It's been so long. 

He's still trying to remember when they bash the first guys head in. 

This is it. They're going to kill him. He's fighting even harder against the cuffs, twisting and turning but he can't get free, he can't, Merle would call him a fucking pussy, Merle would -

But he'll never find Merle again, never, he'll never find Beth or Carol, he'll never find Sophia (or maybe he will, maybe she'll come when it's his blood spurting out, filling up the basin, maybe she'll takes his hand and say _it's all right, you're with me_ ) he'll never, never, never - 

He hears Glenn breathing next to him, high and fast, almost hyperventilating. Glenn is next and he's going to have to listen, listen to the bat hit his head, listen to the gurgle and gush as they cut his throat and bleed him dry, listen to Glenn die as they wind up and prepare to kill Daryl - 

"Hey! Your shot count?"  
  
And they don't hit Glenn. 

And then Bob is doing something at the end, and Gareth yanks the gag out and listens to him. Daryl can't listen really to what's being said, is too busy listening to Glenn's breathing, to the feet behind him, in case they shuffle back and raise the bat and - 

" - cure - Washington - don't have to - put the world back how it was -"  
  
"Can't go back, Bob," Gareth says, and gags Bob one more time, Bob still yelling into the gag. It makes Daryl's skin crawl that Gareth remembers Bob's name.   
  
Then he's yanking down Rick's gag, crouched down in front of them, making eye contact like some deranged kindergarten teacher. "We saw you go into the woods with a bag and come out without it. Had to pull my spotters back before we could go look for it. What was in it?"  
  
They'd been watching them this whole time. 

Rick doesn't say anything.   
  
"You hid it, right? In case things went bad?" He nods at them. "Smart."   
  
Daryl wants to lunge forward, wants to headbutt the fucker in the face, wants to -

And then Gareth has Bob by the neck, pulled over the tub, and Daryl stiffens and fights and it's not going to be Glenn next, it's going to be Bob and after Bob that means Rick, he'll have to watch Rick -

"What was in it? I'm curious. It was a big bag."  
  
Daryl looks at Rick. Rick's not blinking. Daryl's not sure if Rick even knows everything in the bag. It was the Claimers' stuff. Daryl had been the one to bag it all up, that morning when Rick was staring eye forward, covered in blood.   
  
Kind of like now. 

"Really? You're going to let me do this?" The knife gets even closer to Bob's face and Daryl realizes they aren't going to kill him. Just blind him.   
  
He can't tell if that's worse.

"You let me take you out there," Rick says, sounding like reasonable Officer Grimes, "I'll show you."  
  
"Not gonna happen. This might." The knife jabs forward, so close, so -

"There's guns in it," Rick says finally. He rattles them off like he's doing inventory at the police station. "AK-47, a .44 Magnum. Automatic weapons. Night scope. There’s a compound bow and a machete with a – what is it, Daryl? Is it red?"  
  
Daryl remembers the machete in Joe's hand, finishing off Len with a shot to the brain. Daryl nods.  
  
"Yeah, that's right, a _red_ handle. That’s what I’m gonna use to kill you."  
  
Gareth smiles at him patiently. "Thanks," he says. And he gags Rick again.   
  
That's it. There's no other move. There's nothing else.   
  
Just this. The bat being pulled back behind Glenn, the sickening crunch, the - 

But when the crunch comes, it shakes the whole building, knocks him over.   
  
And Glenn is right there next to him, head intact, the gag spit out of his mouth.   
  
_This is our chance_ , he sees Glenn mouth at him. And Daryl nods, even though his ears are ringing from whatever just happened. 

It's their chance. Time to take it.

* * *

Once Gareth leaves and Rick gets his hands free, Rick takes the two guys out easy.   
  
Once Daryl and Glenn and Bob are free too, they're moving.   
  
"If they got problems, we got a chance," Rick is saying as he cuts everybody free. Daryl's hands and feet tingle as the blood flows back into them. Feels grateful for a moment his blood is there, in him, circulating or whatever the shit, instead of glugging down the drain in front of them.   
  
"What are these people?" Daryl hears as his hands run over all the knives, laid out like an operating room on TV. He tries not to think about what these knives have done. Grabs one. 

"They ain't people," Daryl says fiercely. He swings the knife. It's weight is familiar in his hand. He knows what to do now. 

And they do it. 

It looks like a slaughterhouse, probably because it is. Daryl feels his stomach lurch, bile rise up in his throat.   
  
"You cross any of these people, you kill 'em. Don't hesitate. They won't."

There's screaming and smoke and the ever present growl of walkers.   
  
"They're distracted," Rick says. "If we run, we can get by 'em -"  
  
"We've got to let those people out," Glenn says, and Rick stares at him. "That's still who we are." The sides of Glenn's mouth are bleeding slightly from the gag. "It's got to be."  
  
"Rick," Daryl says, and Rick looks at him. "More of our people could be in there."  
  
That's what does it. 

It's not any of their people though - for a moment, he hopes Beth will come out, her blonde ponytail messy, or Carol. But it's just some crazy asshole. A walker gets him two seconds later. 

And they move on.

Once Rick has a gun, it goes even quicker.

They're fighting their way out with two guns, four stolen slaughtering knives, a baseball bat and an army of splinters. 

And they're winning. 

Well, not winning. It's not like they've taken out every last person in Terminus. But they've done enough to get away, to fight another day.   
  
In this world now, that feels like winning. 

They're up and over the fence as quick as they can be, a burlap draped over the barbed wire. Daryl feels it scratch at his arms through the cloth as he pulls himself over, but it doesn't matter because he's on the other side, Glenn beside him, Maggie in front, Rick and mustache guy behind, and they're running, running, running.   
  
Daryl doesn't look back. 

* * *

"How'd you set off the bomb?" Abraham asks as they got through the woods. Daryl's the one who marked the tree, who remembers, so he's the one leading the way to the bag. He's scouring the ground for signs that the people from Terminus got there first, but the only tracks he sees are his own. 

And maybe one other.   
  
He squints at it, but dismisses it because the ground where they buried the guns is untouched and he's finding the shovel and digging.   
  
"We didn't," Glenn says. "Someone else did."  
  
"What are we still hanging around here for?"   
  
"Guns, some supplies," Rick says. He's made quick work of the hole and Daryl can see the top of the bag poking out of the dirt. "We go along the fences, use the rifles, take out the rest of them."  
  
"What?" Bob says, and Rick turns around and his eyes are wild.   
  
"They don't get to live," Rick says, and he keeps digging.

"Rick, we got out," Glenn says as Rick unearths the bag, opens it. "It's over."  
  
Daryl disagrees. It isn't over. Those people should pay for what they done, buckets of blood and rooms of ruined bodies, and it's not over. It's never over. He remembers the Governor, coming back, killing Hershel, and he thinks they should just finish the problem here and now. Get it done. Finish it, even if it can't really be over. 

But most of all he thinks they just need to live to fight another day. That's all they need. 

It's a win. Or enough of one. Isn't it?  
  
The others are arguing about fences and fire, walkers and wastes of time. Daryl's chewing on a finger when he hears the snap of a twig behind him. Whirls around, hand going for his crossbow - it's gone, though, it's gone and he's weirdly off balance without it. Raises the knife instead, and - 

Carol is standing there. His bow in her hand.

* * *

He doesn't remember how he got there, but the next thing he knows he's in Carol's arms. He's not sure who moved first, her or him, who went to who. He just knows they're back together, and it's enough, it's enough.   
  
It's enough.   
  
He's taller than he was when he saw her last, but it doesn't matter. His head is buried in the crook of her shoulder and he can feel himself shaking, about to fly apart, no Hershel to put him back together but it doesn't matter now, it doesn't matter, because Carol's here and she's alive and she found him again - 

He feels tears on his cheek, reaches up to wipe them and realizes they belong to Carol. 

She has her hands on either side of his face and it hurts a little, his bruises from Joe's whupping not yet healed, but her eyes are roving over every inch of him and she pulls his head to her and kisses him fiercely on the forehead. And that's all it takes for him and then he is crying, he puts his head down on her shoulder and her hands touch the side of his face and he's okay, he's going to be okay, it's all going to be okay -

He hears a twig snap behind them and it's Rick. Daryl tenses. He can't send her away again, he can't, not when they just found her. He'll go with her this time, he tells himself, not letting go of her hand as Rick comes closer. His eyes dart over Carl, Michonne, Maggie, Glenn. He'd hate to leave them, but he could do it. He could. He'd be okay. 

But Rick doesn't kick her out. "Did you do that?" he asks, and Carol, face guarded, nods. 

But then Rick is hugging her too and the others all seem happy, so happy - Carol is back and it's a win, the day is a win.   
  
It's enough. Even before they find out about Little Asskicker. 

After that, it's the best day Daryl can remember.

Even with almost getting eaten twice over.

* * *

They scribble out the words every time they see them - NO SANCTUARY. Daryl wonders about other roads, other signs. They go as fast as they can, following the tracks, but every sign they see, they still stop. NO SANCTUARY. NO SANCTUARY.

The group is big now, and they're loud. Daryl misses walking with Beth, her feet quiet behind his. After a while they leave the tracks behind and it feels like a herd of elephants stampeding through the forest. Daryl flinches.   
  
"We messing up your groove?" an amused voice says, and he spins around and of course Carol is there.   
  
He shrugs, smiles shyly at her. They've been apart for long enough Daryl doesn't remember exactly how to respond anymore.   
  
"Jus' loud," he mumbles. "Used to quiet."  
  
"I'll bet," Carol says. She smoothes his hair out of his eyes. "You all right?"  
  
He thinks about everything that's happened, losing Beth, Joe and the Claimers, Hershel. "M'fine," he mutters. Because he is. Or he will be. It's the same thing.   
  
"Didja -" he starts, but he can't finish. "Hershel -" Carol puts a hand on his shoulder. 

"Tyreese told me. I'm so sorry."  
  
"Ain't me you gotta be sorry for," her mumbles. "Maggie, an' Beth, they 're the ones lost -"  
  
"I'm sorry for them," Carol says softly. "And I'm sorry for you too."  
  
Daryl nods. Bites his lip.   
  
"I - I couldn't find Lizzie or Mika. When the prison fell. I looked for 'em but I -"  
  
Something crosses her face, almost a spasm, and she shakes her head.   
  
"It's okay." She looks at him. "I wanted to - I don't know what you know, about - why I left, but -"  
  
"I don't care," Daryl says quickly. Karen and David feel like a lifetime ago. There's been so many dead since then. "I don't. Really. You did what you hadta. I get it."  
  
Carol nods, slowly.   
  
"I won't tell nobody. Rick -"  
  
"Tyreese knows already. It's all right." Her hand cards through the back of his hair.  
  
"I was coming back for you," she says, and Daryl swallows hard. Her hand keeps moving, cradling the back of his skull, like he's some baby or something, like he's Judith. "I was on my way. When I saw the smoke."

Daryl starts chewing on his finger again. Nods.   
  
"Stop that. People will think we don't feed you," Carol says, but it reminds him of Terminus, the room with the corpses all hanging, skinned, like deer being cut down for venison -

He takes his finger out of his mouth. Scrubs it on his pantleg. When he does, his arm jostles something in his shirt. It crinkles against his skin.   
  
Oh. He slips his hands under there for a moment, runs his thumb over the folded edge of the photograph. It ain't his. He only took it because Carol was gone. Sure he looked at it sometimes, but it wasn't his.   
  
"I - I, uh. Got somethin' for you." He unpins it from his shirt, quick, before he chickens out. "I - when Rick said he made you leave, I -" He shoves it out towards her. Doesn't meet her eye.   
  
What if she's mad? he wonders suddenly. He'd been in her room, in her stuff. The picture was hidden, pinned in her pillowcase. She hadn't wanted anyone to see it, to know it was there. It wasn't for other people. And he'd had it now for months, had gotten it even more crinkled and dirty, had got blood -

"Sorry," he blurts out, because Carol still isn't talking and maybe she noticed the blood too. "I - got somethin' on it, but I - I cleaned it off as good as I could, an' - I'm sorry," he says again, because Carol is so quiet, and her hand on his head has disappeared. He braces himself for a smack there, but when he sneaks a peek at her, he stops holding himself so hard.   
  
Carol's got one hand over her mouth and the other hand holding the picture. He can see Sophia, her tongue poking through the whole left by her missing front teeth, her hand curled around her mother's waist, from between Carol's fingers. Carol isn't making a sound, but her shoulders shake - once, twice, tiny things, but he knows what they are.   
  
"I - I'm sorry," he says one more time. He's not sure what he's apologizing for - for messing up her picture? For going through her stuff? For being too sick to go with her on the run with Rick, too sick to choose her? For making her cry? He doesn't know.   
  
"Oh, Daryl," Carol chokes.   
  
And then she's holding him again. 

After sleeping pinned next to Joe for three nights, Daryl thought he was done with fucking touching. But it's not like this. He doesn't feel trapped or caught, it doesn't feel too close. It's not like she's getting up in his space because she is his space. Whatever bubble there is around him, it's her bubble too.   
  
It's like home. And he relaxes into it as she hugs him, feels her shoulders shaking, feels his shake too. He can hear the others getting further away, but he can find them again why they start walking. Nothing could be easier.   
  
Finally, Carol pulls away. Wipes at her face, at the tears, then wipes at Daryl's too. Her fingers linger lightly over his black eye, his cut lip, the scrapes on his neck.   
  
"Are you all right?" Carol asks him again, and Daryl nods.   
  
"I - yeah. I will be."  
  
And then catch up to the others. It's getting dark, and they've got a long way to go. 


	2. Stranger

The thing that's good about so many people is that everyone has a job to do, which means Daryl doesn't have to do all of them. 

"Many hands make light work," Maggie says, but the words sound strange in her mouth. Those are Hershel's words. 

No matter how far they go, the smoke of Terminus billows behind them, saying they haven't gone far enough. 

"Think it's still burning back there?" the new girl, Tara, asks him when they stop. Carl is feeding Judith, his scratched face soft as he looks at her.   
  
"Naw," he says. Spits. "Smoke ain't black no more. Means it's done."   
  
From the corner of his eye, he sees Carol twitch. 

Daryl goes out hunting. It's nice to be alone, in that big crowd, and they make so much noise, it's not like he's in any danger of losing them. He should be mad - they're scaring the good game away, all he gets are six scrawny squirrels and an ancient rabbit without much hop left in him - but he isn't. He just listens to them as he goes, the tromp of their feet on the road, the quiet murmur of their talk.   
  
It's not enough food for everyone, not by a long shot, but Abraham looks at him with new consideration when he hands over the rabbits for Carol to skin.   
  
Glenn and Carl build the fire and they spit roast the animals. They don't have plates so they just pass them around, everyone taking a bite before handing it to the next person. Daryl watches the new people close, to see if they take more than their share. They don't, not even the guy with the mullet who looks wistfully as he passes the squirrel over to Maggie.   
  
"I'll take watch," Carol says as they let the fire die as low as they can and everyone huddles up. They're using leaves to try and insulate but Daryl knows that's not going to be worth much in the Georgia woods in fall after dark. The thought of any of them getting too close to him, slinging an arm over him in the night, makes his skin crawl.  
  
He doesn't say anything. Just follows Carol.  
  
As they settle a little outside of the camp, Daryl resting his chin on the butt of his crossbow, Carol says "You should get some sleep. Going to be a lot of walking tomorrow."  
  
Daryl shrugs. "Ain't gonna sleep there anyway," he mumbles. "Might as well be here."   
  
Carol's quiet for a moment. "Why don't you lie back here? At least get a little rest."  
  
Daryl shrugs again. Feels the rough bark of the tree through his shirt.   
  
"Saw you'n Rick talkin'," he says after a minute. He's worrying his thumbnail between his teeth. "He - he ain't gonna -"  
  
"He apologized," Carol says with no inflection in her voice. "Asked if I'd have you all. After what he did."  
  
Daryl grunts. Ignores the relief ballooning in his stomach. "Good."  
  
"He doesn't have to apologize. Not for - I'm not sorry I did it. But I'm sorry I had to do it."  
  
Karen and David. Daryl shrugs in the dark. Knows she can't see him.  
  
"I'm sorry about a lot of things."  
  
Carol's looking at him now and he darts a look at her before fastening his eyes on the tree line again.   
  
"Why don't you want to sleep?" Carol asks.  
  
"Ain't I don't wanna. Jus - don't know if I can." She doesn't know about Joe or the Claimers. He doesn't think. He didn't tell her, and he doesn't want to tell her. There's no point to it. They're dead and gone and what if she thinks bad of him, that he got mixed up with people like that? Two sides of the same coin, that's what Joe had said about him. He doesn't want Carol to look at him and see that.   
  
"You want to talk about it?"  
  
He scoffs, spits. He feels her smile next to him but he doesn't look over.   
  
"Yeah. Me neither."  
  
Talk about him or talk about her? He looks over at her. There's something different than before - something harder and softer at the same time. He wonders if she can feel him asking with his eyes.   
  
"I don't want to talk about it," she says firmly, and he bites at his thumbnail and nods. "I can't."  
  
Daryl wonders if he should ask why. But he knows why. Because some things, when you say them, come alive in the air, because some things play behind your eyelids enough you see them all day anyway, because some things are private and don't nobody need to know your damn business all the time, because -  
  
"I just need to forget it," she says, and she looks at him. Yeah. Forgetting sounds good.   
  
"A'right," he says. If she wants to forget, he'll let her. 

And hopefully she'll let him too.

He's up before he registers why - the snap of a twig, the rustle of leaves, and Carol's a half step behind him. But there's no more noises, no movement. He hesitates - feels his skin thrumming, like he's being watched, but - 

"It's nothin'," he says finally. Squints out into the darkness for another moment.   
  
But there's nothing. 

* * *

In the end, he does rest - curled into a ball at the foot of the tree, Carol's warmth next to him, eyes closed but ears listening, hand curled around the crossbow. The next day he goes off to hunt again, loops around to see, but the ground where he thought he heard something is undisturbed. He frowns.   
  
He comes back with a string of squirrels and no real answers and the whole group drawing on him.  
  
"We surrender," he says, holding up the squirrels, and Carol rolls her eyes at him as the others holster their weapons.   
  
"Carol told me what you heard last night," Rick says, falling in next to him. "You find anything?"  
  
"No tracks, no nothin'," he says. 

"So whatever you heard last night -"  
  
Daryl shrugs. "S'more what I felt." He doesn't know how to explain it to Rick, the feeling of being watched crawling over his skin, the kinds of knowing you can't prove with signs. "If someone was watchin' us, there woulda been somethin'."  
  
Rick just looks at him. Nods. 

But the line tightens up and they start steering a path to the road. 

At least until they hear the screaming. 

* * *

Daryl doesn't like priests. The Dixon's weren't exactly religious - he could count the times he'd been in church on two hands and have fingers left over. His dad thought God was pretty much bullshit but he hated Muslims and Jews and faggots and whoever the fuck else there was. "Can't trust a man who don't have Jesus on their side," Will had said. Daryl wasn't sure Jesus was on their side either, but that wasn't worth saying.   
  
Hershel was the most religious person he'd ever met and he'd never been able to wrap his head around it. What it gave the man, what it was for. But Hershel never tried to push him about it, so he let it be.   
  
But people like this, useless do-gooders, people who think they're better than you because they got some collar around their neck and the word of the Lord on their side - yeah, Daryl doesn't like that. 

So he's lukewarm on the priest already, even before he starts talking about them being sent by God or how the Lord watches over him. Whatever. Like the Lord would protect his useless puking axe and leave Hershel to rot? If it's true, then that God doesn't mean shit and this man means less than that. Especially when he eats their food and asks them for help.

"Because the Lord abhors violence," the man says, and Daryl spits.

* * *

The guy jokes about stealing their shit and seems confused when they don't find it funny.

The church is white and standing and eerily quiet. Rick has them look it over, top to bottom.   
  
It's quiet and empty and stale inside. Empty cans line the walls. Verses hang from everywhere, over everything, a smothering blanket of words. 

"I've cleaned out every place nearby, except for one," the man says as they set up in the main room. 

"They call the area around the altar the sanctuary," Carol murmurs to him, and he looks at her. She's looking at the priest with calculating eyes.   
  
Daryl nods. He gets what she means. 

Rick pulls Carl aside for a talk before he leads the group to the food bank and he comes out looking worried and confused.   
  
"He want to go?" Carol asks as they load up.   
  
"No," Rick says, a crease between his eyebrows. "Didn't even ask."

Daryl looks back at Carl. Carl's holding Judith at the front door of the church, her chubby hand fisted in his hair. 

* * *

When they go to the food bank, he and Carol go for water. 

"You trust this guy?" Daryl asks. He remembers Carol in the church when they looked for Sophia. _Please, Lord. Punish me however you want, but show mercy on her._

Carol shakes her head. "Something's off." He nods. "Don't know if there's anyone left in the world whose trustworthy anyway."  
  
"You are."  
  
Carol looks at him with unreadable eyes. "Oh, pookie. I'm not."  
  
They walk a little longer in quiet. "I - know y'don' wanna talk about it," he mumbles. Focuses on the weight of the water jugs hanging from his hands, the crunch of leaves on asphalt under their feat. "An' I ain't - but you okay?"  
  
"Gotta be," she says quietly. Daryl nods.  
  
"Y'think - y'think Rick's gonna take us to Washington?" Daryl asks.  
  
"I don't know. He's thinking about it."  
  
"We - we can't leave without Beth."   
  
Carol looks at him levelly. Her eyes are sad. "I know. But Daryl - we don't know where she is."  
  
It's like a knife. He keeps walking. 

"He might decide not to go. It's not like Washington is going to be any different than it is here."   
  
The water sloshes with every step. "Y'think - you don' think we ever get to start over?" He thinks about himself, his life with his dad, his life at the camp and the farm and the prison. His life on the road. He feels like he's been so many different ways, so many different stories and scars imprinted on his skin. Washington is so far. Daryl's never even been out of Georgia. Maybe in Washington, things could be different. 

Maybe. But maybe not.   
  
"I don't know," Carol says.   
  
"We did," he says. It's the closest he's ever come to referencing Ed.   
  
"Maybe," Carol says finally.   
  
"You saved us," Daryl says. "All by yourself." You saved me, he thinks, but he doesn't say it. Doesn't know how. 

She loves you, Rick had said to him, before Terminus, and he loves her too but it's words he's never had to say and he doesn't know how to shape them. He loves her no matter what happened after the prison fell, no matter what she had to do. He doesn't know if she'll always love him, the shit he's done, but she changed him. She gave him a new start. That's something, something real.   
  
She'd saved him. But he doesn't know how to make her understand, isn't sure he understand himself.   
  
"We got lucky. We all should be dead." Carol's pace picks up. A car, dusty and abandoned, a little ways ahead. "I'll check it."

She tries the engine, checks the back before he figures out what to say.

"We ain't dead," he says finally. Because they ain't. They're alive. They found each other. 

It's enough.   
  
"Whatever - happened," he says, and he feels Carol tense, "happened. Let's -" he looks at her and he wants to say, let's let it be enough, that we're alive and together and you've got your picture and I've got my bow and we're here, we're here, we're here.  
  
"Let's start over."  
  
"I want to," Carol says quietly.   
  
"Then - then we can," Daryl says. "Can't we?"  
  
Carol looks at him for a second. Then nods, once. Turns away.   
  
They leave the car for back up. He offers to take her water but the one he's holding slips out of his hands, sloshes out onto the ground.   
  
"I got it," she says with a smile. 

And they walk back together.

* * *

When they get back, Tyreese is playing peekaboo with the little asskicker, who is practically squealing with delight.   
  
"We got water," Carol says. "Where's Carl?"  
  
"He went out back," Tyreese says, hiding his face again for a long moment before popping out. Judith's hands clap together in glee. "Think he was checking the perimeter."  
  
"I'll tell him we're back," Daryl says, putting the water down. He goes outside.   
  
Carl is there, leaning against the back of the church. His hat on his head.   
  
"We got the water," Daryl says, and Carl nods.   
  
"Good."  
  
They stand there for a second, quiet. Then Carl lets out a shaky breath.   
  
"I - back before the Claimers -" Daryl feels his shoulders twitch, "My dad - he said he was proud of me."  
  
Daryl remembers Rick's hands on his shoulders when they ran the mission to Woodbury to get Glenn and Maggie. _I'd be proud to claim you._   
  
"Yeah," Daryl says. "Cool." But Carl looks at him with eyes that are wide and tormented and he clenches his fists.   
  
"I was saying - to Michonne, before Terminus, I - I'm not the son he wants me to be. I'm not - good, anymore, I'm not - I think about doing things and I -"  
  
Daryl looks at Carl - Carl, the closest thing he's had to a brother for two years, Carl with his excited jabber and his petty sulks, Carl in his mismatched shoes, Carl's face being ground into the ground by Dan, Carl and him playing War with ragged playing cards and Carl losing, Carl sharing comics and Carl hoarding comics and Carl, baby face growing out, voice deepening.   
  
"Y're good," Daryl says, and Carl's face twists and he shakes his head.   
  
"I'm not. I'm - the people at Terminus, I'm like them, I just want to hurt everybody before they hurt us, I hate people and I want to -"  
  
"You're not like them," Daryl says again. Looks at Carl. "Y'wouldn't - I hate as hard as anybody," Daryl says quietly. "I - if I coulda killed Joe myself I woulda, if I weren't a coward -"  
  
"You're not a coward, you're -"  
  
"You ain't neither," Daryl says. "It's - bein' good, it ain't - the world is different now." Daryl's not sure how true that is in a lot of ways, but in this way it is. "Ain't like you're seekin' out people to hurt, tryin' to - I get it. When you're hurtin', feels good to put the hurt on somebody else. That's normal."  
  
Carl is staring at him, transfixed. "You -"  
  
"Yeah. Fuck, I get it, your dad was - but ain't everybody start out as Rick fuckin' Grimes, a'right? Some people - y'ain't never hurt nobody who was lookin' to you for somethin'. You never would."  
  
Carl swallows hard, looks away. "I don't - I don't know if that's true."  
  
"Well then fuckin' listen, 'cause I know. Jus' said it, din't I?"  
  
Carl rubs at his face. "I'm - I'm trying. To be - to act the way he thinks I should. To be the person he thinks I am. It's just -"  
  
He thinks about Carl staying behind with Judith without a word of complaint, thinks of him running off towards the priest.   
  
"Maybe if I act like that enough, maybe - maybe it won't be like acting, after a while. You think - you think that's possible?"  
  
Carl is looking at him like Daryl holds his heart in his hands, so Daryl just shrugs. Thinks about the road, about Carol. About chances.   
  
"We can start over," he says to Carl, and Carl closes his eyes and nods. He seems almost near tears. "We can."  
  
"We can," Carl says quietly. And he sniffs.   
  
Daryl jostles his shoulder hard. "Come on, you pussy," he says gruffly. "Let's check the fuckin' perimeter."  
  
That's when they find the message scratched into the wood. 

* * *

YOU'LL BURN IN HELL FOR THIS.

The words run around in his head as they feast, as Abraham toasts them, and Daryl's eyes keep cutting over to Gabriel, even as Abraham says his piece. 

Judith coos. "What's that?" Rick says. A scattering of laughter. "I think she knows what I'm about to say."

They're going to Washington.   
  
Daryl tries not to think about Beth.   
  
It's been eight days. Maybe more, Terminus fucked his count. Eight days without a trail, without a hope. Without a clue.   
  
But they can't just abandon her.   
  
He looks over at Maggie. Maggie too is biting her lip, but she's looking at Glenn. At the others. 

He sees Carol slip out. He follows her. 

"Where you goin'?" Daryl asks when they're far enough from the church that she won't send him back. She jumps.   
  
"Don't scare me like that."  
  
"Sorry." He kicks a foot at the ground. "Where you goin'?"  
  
"Get that car."  
  
"You - you leavin?"

Carol looks at him. "Hey. Look at me." He does. She puts her hands on either side of his face. "Daryl, I - I don't know if I'm good enough to take care of - anyone."  
  
"Y'are -"  
  
"Let me talk." He quiets. Her fingers are cool against the night air, against the mild panic that is making his face hot. "I - I can't talk about it. What happened. I can't."  
  
He nods.   
  
"But I - I won't ever leave without telling you. Ever."  
  
"Y'gonna - leave me behind?" His voice is small and he feels vibration in her hands as she shakes her head.   
  
"Never. But - Daryl, you can choose different. It won't hurt me, it won't -" She swallows and her eyes are wet. "You can do better than me. Rick, the others -"  
  
"I can't," he says. And he's never meant anything more in his life.   
  
Her eyes close and he sees her lip tremble, once, then still. "I'll tell you before I go anywhere. I promise. But I'm saying - if I come and tell you I'm going, you don't - have to come with me. You don't. You can make a new start."  
  
"Can't," Daryl says. "Not without you."  
  
Carol leans forward and presses their foreheads together. 

"I don't deserve you," she says, and she sounds broken and her voice is so soft and he doesn't know what to say so he just says it, in one breath.   
  
"I love you."  
  
And that's when the car that took Beth passes them by.


	3. Consumed

Driving without headlights makes everything dark. He can see up ahead, two little red dots, a smudge of white that might be a cross.

Carol's driving. She doesn't say anything about what he said before they saw the car. When he smashed the headlights, she didn't even ask any questions. Once he said Beth, she was in the drivers seat and they were on the road.   
  
"Rick's going to wonder where you went," Carol says after a while. Daryl's eyes are fixed on the red taillights lights in the distance. He looks at her, sees the needle hovering near empty.   
  
"You too," he says, and he shrugs. Bites at a finger. "We'll explain when we get back. He won't worry. We're together."  
  
She just keeps driving and Daryl stares out the window.   
  
"North on I-85," Carol says after a while. "That's towards Atlanta." She pauses. "We could end this quick. Run him off the road."  
  
"But if he won't say - how're we gonna find her?"  
  
"He'll say." Her voice is hard. 

"But if he don't, we're back to square one. Right now, we got the advantage." It's just a different kind of tracking, he thinks, and the thought soothes him. He's good at tracking. He taught Beth. "They're with a group, we'll see what they do. An' we'll do what we gotta to get her back."

They'll find her. 

Carol nods and keeps driving. 

And Daryl bites his thumb and watches out the window and wonders if he just fucked everything up. 

* * *

The car stops and people get out and one of them is a cop and Carol's holding her gun. His bow is in the floor space at his feet and he leans down slow, inches it upwards, as if any quick movement will tell the cops they're there. 

When someone slams the window, Daryl jumps and grabs Carol's arm. But it's not the cops. It's a walker. At first Daryl's glad because it means the cops didn't see them, but the walker keeps slamming against the window, over and over again, and it's like a big sign. PEOPLE HERE!  
  
The cops ain't dumb. They can read that sign as clear as anyone at this point. 

The car takes off and they're out of gas and the car disappears into the mass of seething blackness that is Atlanta.   
  
"We gotta move," Daryl says. Another walker slams against the car. "Find someplace to hole up till sunlight."   
  
"I know a place," Carol says. "Just a couple of blocks from here. We can make it."  
  
And they do. 

Daryl jimmies the door as the walkers converge and they disappear into the building. All smooth floors and glass fronted doors.   
  
"You used to work here or somethin'?" Daryl asks. He can't imagine Carol working. He imagines what she did, imagines her getting dressed for work every day, dropping Sophia off at school, walking into the office with people telling her good morning. 

"Or something," she says.   
  
They block the door as quiet as they can with a desk, sneak around file cabinets, waiting room chairs. Carol snagged the keys from the corpse in the hallway. She unlocks the door. 

"Should lock behind us," she says as they slip further into the office.   
  
But it doesn't look as much like an office back here. There's beds and desks, a little kitchenette with a stove, showers, and it doesn't match the front at all.   
  
"What is this place?" he asks, following Carol.   
  
"It's temporary housing," she says quietly. Daryl scans the room with the flashlight.   
  
_Treating Survivors of Childhood Abuse_ , the book says, and he knows where he is and his stomach clenches. 

He wonders what the people thought in here, when everything went to shit. Did they know what was happening, that it was the dead? Or did they just think their husbands, their fathers, had finally caught up to them? His mama had never gone to a place like this. He wonders if she knew they existed. If she even wanted to. 

"We didn't stay," she says quietly. Daryl puts down his flashlight. His bow.   
  
Even without the light, he feels like the title of the book is still glaring out at him in the darkness. 

"I'll take the top bunk," Carol says. It has stuffed animals on it - a bear, maybe a tiger, he can't make it out. "Think the bottom's more your style." The bottom has a flannel pillowcase and a plush pink blanket on it. He runs his fingers over it, gentle. Wonders who slept here last - a thought he hasn't had about any of the places he's slept since this all went down.   
  
He wonders if Carol and Sophia stayed in here, when they came. Sophia'd want the top bunk, he thinks.   
  
"You should sleep," she says. "I'll take first watch."  
  
"It's locked up pretty tight," he says. It'd have to be. He imagines Ed coming, pounding his fist against the door. Imagines his dad.   
  
"I know," Carol says.   
  
"We're good then?" Daryl says.   
  
"I'll keep first watch," she says again. "I don't mind."  
  
Daryl nods. Takes off his jacket, sits on the bed. Looks at Carol's back.   
  
"Y'din't - I'm sorry," he says finally. Carol turns and looks at him.   
  
"About what?"  
  
"About - " About making her take off and leave without a moment's notice. About what he said, before the car came. About - he doesn't know but Carol's looking at him so he shrugs and bites his thumb and says, "Jus' sorry."  
  
"You said we get to start over," Carol says quietly. She looks back out the window.

"Yeah." 

"Did you?" Her shoulders are drawn together and tight and it sounds like a real question, so he thinks about it.   
  
"Tryin' to," he says finally. Carol nods.   
  
"I don't know if we can." She's rubbing her hands together. "I don't know if we get to save people anymore."  
  
Is she talking about Beth? Or about him?   
  
Or about herself?  
  
"Then why're you here?" he asks. She could have stopped him, she could have stopped driving - 

"Because you needed me," she says softly. And he rubs at his face with his hands. 

Then she's sitting on the bed next to him, flopped back, staring at the springs of the top bunk. He picks at his fingernails.   
  
"If I hadn'ta found you," he asks, staring hard at the dirt that's practically a part of him now, so deep under his nails he'll never get it out. "Earlier. Would you - would you have taken the car anyway? Without me?"  
  
Carol's quiet for a moment. "I don't know."  
  
It hurts to hear.   
  
"It isn't - Daryl, I - I shouldn't be - I can't take care of anyone."  
  
"Don't need nobody to take care of me," Daryl mutters. He picks at the cuticles. "Ain't a kid. Almost eighteen."  
  
Carol's quiet next to him. "How does that math work? You were fourteen when this all started, it's only been -"  
  
And then he's mad at her and he pushes off of the bed, goes back over to the desk. "Whatever, y'know what I mean! Ain't need somebody to tuck me in at night an' read me stories or that crap! Ain't what I'm asking for! Hell, I ain't askin' for nothin'! I don't ask for nothin' I can't get!"  
  
Carol is sitting up in the bed now, looking at him. "Daryl -"  
  
Then they hear the thumping from the other room. 

It's hands on glass, weak, trying to get out but they're stuck. Daryl relaxes a little.   
  
Until the little hands appear. 

Carol's about to open the door, her knife already ready, at the right height - 

"You don't have to," he says. It's small, the little walker. Smaller than Sophia.   
  
"I can do it," Carol says, and her hand goes to the doorknob. "It's nothing I haven't done before."  
  
"You don't have to," Daryl says.   
  
And Carol listens. And goes back to the room. 

They don't talk for the rest of the night. Daryl falls asleep to the sound of small hands thumping and the even breathing of Carol above him. 

* * *

He wakes up to faint bright sunlight and a job to do. 

The mom is easy to take care of. One and done, nothing he hasn't done a million times.   
  
The kid is the smallest he's had to put down. It's a girl - the tattered remains of a cast on one arm. He remembers the time his dad broke his arm. He hadn't meant to - not that he was mad he'd done it, but it meant Daryl'd had to go down to the free clinic and the doctor asked a lot of questions, and that wasn't anything any of them wanted. He doesn't even remember what he'd done. His dad had been high and didn't seem to know either. He just remembers his dad's hand gripping him, too tight, twisting him around to face him and then everything exploding into pain, pain, pain. 

Someone drew a butterfly on the cast. Pink and purple.   
  
He ends it quick and he wraps them up. 

He looks at the mom. Who can say anymore what she'd shown up with - bruises or welts or nothing at all. Maybe she just saw that someone was hurting her kid and she realized she couldn't do it anymore. Who knows.   
  
His mama'd never done that. Neither had Merle. No one had.   
  
Not even himself.   
  
It takes him a while to get the mom out of there. He wraps her in a blanket but she's bigger than him, heavy, and he stumbles down the hallway a little when he does it. He doesn't know why he does it - he could just leave her there, just moved the kid - but it felt right. They'd been through so much together. They should end in the same place.   
  
He lays her down on the gravel - gravel's good, it won't catch - wrapped in a sheet, and he soaks the sheet with what's left from Joe's flask (White Lightning) and he sets it on fire.   
  
Then he goes back for the kid.   
  
He wraps her up careful. Remembers watching Beth swaddle the little asskicker, cooing over her as she did it. He doesn't do that, doesn't coo or anything.   
  
"Babies like to be wrapped up tight," Beth explained. "It makes them feel safe." She'd been reading the baby book every night like it was some holy tome, trying to learn everything.   
  
He wraps the kid up tight. He wants her to feel safe. 

Then he takes her outside and he lets her burn. 

He doesn't hear Carol come up behind him. Her hand on his shoulder makes him jump. She's not looking at him. She's looking at them.  
  
"Thank you," she says.   
  
And they watch the mother and daughter disappear into smoke.

* * *

"Car was headin' downtown, right?" Daryl says. They're packing up. He sees Carol shoving down the top of her bag. "Say we get up high, get a view, see what we see."  
  
He didn't have his bag with him. Not the big one. But he's got enough room in his for one more thing. 

"We can stay close to the buildings and keep quiet, but sooner or later we're gonna be drawing them." Daryl nods to show he understands. 

He waits until she's gone to grab the book off the desk and shove it in his bag. 

He doesn't know why. He doesn't steal shit for fun, he just takes shit he needs, and he doesn't need this book. _Treating Survivors of Childhood Abuse._ Yeah whatever he'd got knocked around some, more than some people, but if you'd survived something, why would you need treatment from it? If you made it through something, you made it through. You moved forward. That was it.   
  
But he takes the book and he feels the rectangle of it burning in his back as they go. He grabs a notebook too - for Beth, he thinks, because she probably doesn't have her stupid little green one anymore and she should have it.

He'd only been in Atlanta the two other times - the CDC and the run to get his dad - and so he's surprised when he realizes he knows where they are.   
  
The tank is surrounded by trash and dead walkers and lush green growths.   
  
Nature taking back its own. 

They run along the buildings quick, light. He can hear Carol's bag jingling slightly with every step. Next time they got some tape, he'd tape 'em up for her, so the buckles and snaps wouldn't make noise, so - 

He uses the notebook for a distraction - he'll find Beth another one. He wonders what it is about fire that draws the walkers - is it the heat? The way it flickers? But it doesn't matter why because it does and they steal their way in through the parking garage up to the skybridge. 

Seems like other people had the same idea about high ground. But it didn't work out for them. The walkers wriggle around in their sleeping bags like fat dead caterpillars and Daryl wonders what happened. Someone get them in their sleep, he guesses. Probably early because they are stabbed in the head, just the body.   
  
They pick their way across the floor, taking them out as easily as squashing a bug. The ones in the tent are trapped. They pass that by.   
  
That's a mistake.   
  
They ducked through the locks on the door, Daryl having a little trouble - his shoulders are getting wider, he's putting on some muscle, even if he isn't putting on any weight. 

It's always striking to Daryl how quickly things can go from order to chaos. From the trash and debris of the streets to the weird destroyed camp in the skybridge and then to the pristine elegance of this weird ass office. There's hats on hatstands and water in coolers, lamps and decor just so, family pictures.   
  
But the view from the window is scorched earth, dead trees, smoke and damage.   
  
"How did we get here," Carol says softly, looking out.   
  
They took I-85 and stayed the night at a battered woman's shelter and crossed the skybridge. But he knows what she means.   
  
"I'unno," he replies. "Jus' did."   
  
She's quiet next to him. "I love you too, Daryl," she says softly. She doesn't look at him.   
  
He doesn't know how to feel or what to say. His tongue is tied into knots, his stomach is exploding. So he just stays still.   
  
"But I'm not good for you."  
  
She's been better for him, to him, than anyone else he's ever known. Even better than Hershel. And she's here. She's alive.   
  
What else does he need?  
  
"You can love something that hurts you," she says, and he flinches because he thinks of the night Sophia died, of yelling at her in the field, getting in her space, but then he realizes she's not talking about her loving him.   
  
She's talking about him loving her.   
  
"You can love something that's bad for you."  
  
"Y'ain't bad for me," he says roughly.  
  
"I killed Lizzie and Mika."   
  
It hangs in the air heavy, so heavy. 

"They were with Tyreese. Judith. They - Lizzie was - confused. About the walkers. She didn't - I thought I could help her, but I -"  
  
 _It hurts to fight. You'll see._ He remembers Lizzie's face, flushed with fever, her pointed chin. _You'll see. I'll show you. It's not like how you all think. It's just different._

"So she killed Mika. And I killed her."   
  
It's so quiet. Carol looks at him, then, her eyes so blue, and her hand touches his chin. "Everyone I love -"

"Ain't like that," he says quick. "Lizzie was messed up 'fore you ever - she was like that in the prison too, she was -"  
  
"It doesn't matter. I should have seen it sooner, I should have protected Mika, and Judith, I should have made her understand before -"  
  
"Lovin' somebody don't mean you can fix 'em," he says, quiet. And it's true. He had loved his father, once. He had been young but he thought he could remember it, the feeling. He still loved Merle. But Merle loved meth and Merle would always love meth and getting into shit that was bad for him and even if Merle loved him back (which was something Daryl hadn't ever doubted) it didn't mean Daryl could stop him from doing the stupid shit Merle always did.   
  
Loving Carol didn't mean he could wipe away what had happened or bring Lizzie or Mika or Sophia back. It just meant that she filled something up that was empty, and that was enough for him.   
  
But maybe it wasn't enough for her.   
  
Carol just shakes her head. Looks away.   
  
"You're so good, Daryl," she says as she looks out the window. "Some people don't deserve the love we give them."

"You do," he says stubbornly. Carol is shaking her head again.

But then her focus changes and she points and he goes and looks too. It's another car. Double white crosses in the window.

And they're off. 

* * *

He's halfway through the door when he hears Carol's voice, scared - 

"Daryl, don't!"

But it's too late. He's already through.

And the kid with the gun has already seen him.   
  
He's his age, maybe a little older.   
  
"Put it down," he says. He gestures at Carol's gun, at Daryl's bow.  
  
"Man, fuck you," Daryl spits.   
  
"Look, nobody has to get hurt. I just need weapons, that's it. So, please, lay down your crossbow."

He does.

"Back up."

They do. 

"Sorry about this." The boy actually sounds like he means it as he slices through the nylon of the tent, letting the walkers free."You look tough. You'll be all right."  
  
Daryl wills one of the walkers to turn around and go for the kid, but they don't. They go straight for him and Carol.   
  
They take care of them. And then, Carol tries to take care of the kid.   
  
But she sees Daryl looking at her. And she lowers her gun. And the kid gets away with their weapons. 

* * *

"I should have shot him," Carol says as Daryl tries to open the door. "He was stealing our weapons. Without weapons we could die. Beth could die."  
  
"We can find more weapons," Daryl says. Pries at the door lock. He knows they will. The world is full of weapons. They'll find more.   
  
"I don't want you to die. I don't want Beth to die. I don't want any of them back at the church to die. But I can't just stand around and watch it happen either. I can't!"  
  
"Ain't gonna have to watch me die," Daryl mumbles. He drops his bag to the ground and gets lower.   
  
"Everyone I love dies," she says, and Daryl wonders if it's true. He thinks about Hershel. About Rick and Lori. About the moment in the prison when he thought Carol was dead and he'd have to finish the kill, outside the door trying and trying to -   
  
"That's why I wanted to go. I didn't want to leave you, I just - needed to be somewhere else -"  
  
"Well, y'aint somewhere else, you're right here," he tells her. "With me. We're tryin'. Y'said you wouldn't go without tellin' me."  
  
"You don't need me, Daryl. I'm not good for you."  
  
"You are," he says. "Fore you I weren't -"  
  
"You're not who you were before and neither am I," Carol says fiercely. "I don't know if I believe in God anymore, or heaven, but if I'm going to hell -"  
  
"Y'ain't goin' to hell," he spits. "You ain't!"  
  
She just looks at him.   
  
"You say I ain't like how I was before?" he asks. "How was I?"

He wonders if he wants to hear. Feral, rude, mean, bad -  
  
"You were like a scared kid," she says. "You're not scared anymore."  
  
The thought of Carol leaving scares him more than anything he can think of.  
  
"What about you?" he asks.   
  
"Me and Sophia stayed at that shelter for a day and a half. Before I went running back to Ed."  
  
He looks at the lock. Tries to wiggle his knife down into it.   
  
"I went home, I got beat up. Life went on."  
  
Yeah. He remembers that feeling real good.   
  
"I just kept praying for something to happen."  
  
Dixons didn't pray. But he wonders now if he was praying too, if somewhere at the same time they were getting the shit kicked out of them and they were hoping for something more, for something to change. 

"I didn't do anything. Not a damn thing."  
  
Neither did Daryl. He remembers the doctor at the free clinic, setting his arm, _anything you want to tell me,_ teachers at school, _we can't help you if you don't say anything, you need to take the first step._

And he'd never said anything. He'd never stepped. He'd never chose different.   
  
Until the side of the road outside Woodbury, taking his things out of the back of the car and Glenn yelling at him -

What about Carol?  
  
"Who I was, with him - she got burned away." Daryl thinks of his mother. Ashes and bone. Thinks about phoenixes from stories, rising out unburnt. "And I was happy about that. I mean, not happy, but - " She stops. Swallows.   
  
She was happy about that. And then Sophia was gone.   
  
"And then at the prison - I got to be who I always thought I should be. Thought I should have been." She swallows again. "And then she got burned away."

She didn't. She's still here, right here in front of him. But he knows what she means. They're different. They're always different. And the second things get good enough so Daryl wishes they wouldn't change, they're different again.   
  
"Everything now just - consumes you."  
  
And it does. He remembers the feeling after Hershel died, the feeling watching the barn burn, watching the smoke rise from the prison, from Terminus. Everything gets eaten, by fire, by walkers. By people.   
  
But they're still there.   
  
"Hey," he says softly. "We ain't ashes." 

She looks at him for a long time. Then she nods, once.   
  
"I - you're right. We're not." She looks up at him.   
  
"I don't - I don't need you to take care of me or nothin'," he says. "I don't need you to do nothin'. 'Cept - don't leave me behind, okay?"   
  
Don't push me away, he thinks. Don't hurt me and hurt yourself because you think all you deserve in the world is to get hurt.   
  
"I won't," she says finally. "I - I won't."  
  
"You promise?" Daryl asks, and he feels like a four year old. He looks back at the lock.   
  
"Daryl." He looks back at her. She leans forward and kisses his forehead. "I promise."  
  
Then the door he's picking at comes open and the boy with their weapons charges back in.  
  
Daryl's in the right position to trip him, and he does. Plucks his bow out of the boy's hands. The boy scrambles but Daryl clocks him in the face and hands Carol her gun.   
  
Carol thought she should have shot him, Daryl remembers, and he watches uneasily.   
  
The boy is crawling away. "The door, close the door, they're - "  
  
They get the door closed just in time. Low snarls and thunks from the other side of it.   
  
The three of them look at each other. 

"I - look, I'm sorry, about before, I'm sorry -" the boy babbles, his hands up in the air. "I just - I needed to get to Grady, that's all, needed to protect myself, that's -"  
  
"Grady," Carol says quickly. "The hospital?"  
  
"I - yeah, I -"  
  
"White crosses. Like a medic," Carol says to him, and he understands then. He gets closer to the kid, nudges his chest with the crossbow.   
  
"Why you gotta go there? They got people there?" 

"I - yeah but you don't wanna - they're bad, okay, I got out but I was gonna see if I could get my friend out too -"  
  
"They got a girl there? Blonde hair?" Daryl snarls, and the boy blinks at him.   
  
"You know Beth?" There's a slam from the garage area and the boy gasps. "No, no - I fired when I was out there, they probably heard the shots, they're gonna come for me -"  
  
"C'mon," Daryl says. He and Carol hoist the boy up.   
  
And they run.

* * *

Carol's running ahead of them when the car hits her.   
  
And she's leaving him behind because she's sprawled out on the road, a little heap of bones and flesh, and he's throwing himself forward but the other boy is stronger, he's got him gripped tight, even with the gimpy leg - 

"Let me go!" Daryl snarls, but the boy is talking sense in his ear.   
  
"They've got medicine - a doctor - they can help her - we can get her back. We can get Beth back." The cops load Carol onto a stretcher.   
  
"What's it gonna take?" he asks, and the boy grimaces.   
  
"A lot," he says. They slam the doors to the car with Carol inside. "They got guns. People."  
  
"S'alright," Daryl says. He watches the car roll out, towards the corner. It turns right. He can just see the smudge of gray that's her head, a bit of brown that might be her boot.  
  
"So do we."


	4. Crossed

There's a moment when Daryl approaches the church when he sees the school bus is gone when his heart stops.  
  
Getting out of Atlanta had been hard enough - they had to run practically all the way out of the city, steal some shitheap car (no fancy red sports cars around for them) and drive back on I-85 with Daryl trying his best to remember all the turns and pathways Carol had taken in the dark. But they made it, him and Noah, the gas light blinking empty the last twenty miles, and they pulled up and the church was dark and the stupid minibus was gone and maybe they'd left without him and Carol. 

But then Michonne is there, on the steps, her sword in her hand - wait, she'd lost the sword at Terminus, how'd she - and the preacher is too and when he steps out of the bushes she's glad to see him.   
  
Until she sees that Carol's not there beside him.   
  
"Where's Carol?" she asks, and he looks back and sees Noah hanging in the bushes like a shy kid at a high school dance.   
  
"Come on out," he says, and Noah does.   
  
"She ain't here," Daryl says. "But we know how to get her. And Beth."  
  
He can't wait to see Maggie's face.   
  
But she's gone. Her and Glenn, they've already left. With Abraham, Eugene, Rosita. With Tara.   
  
"Bob too?" he asks.   
  
And that's when he finds out there are graves he missed in the dark. 

* * *

They're turning the church into a safe house and the preacher doesn't like it.   
  
"You going to take the cross too?" he snarks at Daryl as Daryl takes the organ out front to use as pikes.   
  
Daryl looks at him - this guy, his fucking priest's collar, his disapproving look. Thinks what Carl told him, in the dark of last night, telling him about Bob, about Terminus, about Rick and the machete with the red handle.   
  
About the preacher leaving his people to die.  
  
"If we need it," he says. And he gets the fuck away from that guy. Some things can't be forgiven. 

Daryl might have fucked up in all kinds of ways. But he wasn't a preacher. He didn't turn his back on people who needed him, who were asking him for help.   
  
Not when they were his people. 

It's going to be him, Rick, Sasha, Tyreese, Noah. Going back into Atlanta. The others are barricading themselves in. Just Carl, Michonne, Judith.   
  
The preacher.   
  
Their numbers dwindle so quickly. He remembers that long winding trail through the woods from Terminus. And now, down to this.   
  
Well, their numbers will be back up soon. They'll get back Carol, Beth. They'll catch up with Eugene, Rosita, Abraham. Tara and Maggie and Glenn. They'll be a big group again. Hell, maybe Noah'll come too.   
  
Rick tries to convince Noah to stay at the church. "With your leg," Rick says. "Could be you'd be more of a liability than a -"  
  
"Beth got me out of there," Noah says. His jaw is set. "They - they killed my dad. Just left him to die. I'm not - I'm not staying behind."  
  
And so it's the five of them, in a big rattling cube van, setting off again into Atlanta.   
  
"We been here before," Rick says to Daryl quietly, and Daryl forces a quick smile. He doesn't want to think about the last rescue mission he ran with Rick into Atlanta. That one hadn't ended the way he'd wanted it to.   
  
This one is going to end better.   
  
The one thing that is weird to think about, as he rattles around in the back of the van with Noah, Sasha and Tyreese down at one end talking quietly, is that the last time he'd done this, riding in the van with T-Dog and Glenn, it'd felt like the most unnatural thing in the world. Riding around with coons and chinks, sharing a camp with spics and liberal fucks. He hasn't thought those words for a long time and they feel weird in his head, barbed and uncomfortable. Like they belong in a different story. Like they no longer fit. He looks at Glenn and just sees Glenn - Glenn who is Korean and that's fine, it doesn't change anything about Glenn. T-Dog, smiling up at him, _sometimes we have to learn a better way_. Tyreese and Sasha, Bob - they're just people. They're just like him. And they look different and they know different things and they've lived differently to him but that doesn't matter, because they are his family. They're more his blood than his father is, at this point, because his dad is dead and he is alive, and these people are some of the ones who helped him stay that way.   
  
It's a thought that doesn't come in words and it doesn't come clearly but it comes and he rides and he thinks.   
  
So much is different now. And not all of the differences are bad ones.

Not even most of them.

* * *

"At sundown, we fire a shot into the air," Rick says.   
  
The plan is quiet. The upper hand. Silence and speed. It's a good plan, but it does depend on everything going right.   
  
Tyreese hasn't had anything go right for a long time. He wants to try for a trade.   
  
Daryl tries to think of a time a trade has worked in their favor and can't think of one. 

"That might work. This will work," Rick says.   
  
But Tyreese's way might work too.   
  
"Everybody goes home," Daryl says. "Like he says."   
  
It sounds good to Daryl. He just wants everyone home in one piece. 

They hide out until sundown. Rick and Tyreese keep looking at each other like they aren't sure what to do with each other. Sasha sits next to Tyreese with a machete, spinning it around on the floor. Anytime Tyreese tries to talk to her, she spins it faster.   
  
Noah sits next to Daryl. Daryl oils the drawstring of his bow. He hasn't done it in a while. Hasn't had any oil. He wants everything working perfect when they go to get Carol and Beth.   
  
"So, uh - you and Beth," Noah says. He's not looking at Daryl. "You guys like - a thing?"  
  
Daryl stares at him. "A what?"  
  
"Like - you aren't, uh - together, or anything. Right? Or I mean - if you are that's like, totally cool. I mean, I only knew her for like a week but she's, yeah, like, really cool so it'd be cool if you were -"  
  
"The fuck are you trying to say?" Daryl asks bemusedly. Noah stammers again and stops.   
  
"I - are you messing with me?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"What?"  
  
They stare at each other.   
  
"What you - like Beth?" Daryl asks. He thinks about it. Beth is gentle and beautiful and kind. She doesn't take shit. She can look after herself. For a while, she was the only other person in the world with him.   
  
But the thought of trying to kiss her or hook up with her feels wrong. She's not like one of Merle's girls or the endless string of waitresses and grocery clerks his dad brought home. He doesn't want her for that. He wants her for her, for his friend, his companion. Because he promised to protect her and she'd promised him the same.  
  
He'd never had a sister but he wonders if this is what that feels like.  
  
He squints a little and shrugs as Noah stammers again.   
  
"Naw, I get it," Daryl says finally when he's worried Noah will actually choke if he keeps sputtering like that. "What's not to like?"  
  
Noah immediately relaxes. "Yeah, man."   
  
Daryl nods and keeps oiling his bow. The thought had actually never crossed his mind and now he's wondering why. It's like a worm going around and around in his brain and he bites the inside of his cheek nervously as he works.   
  
Merle would have called him a pussy for not making a move. "There somethin' wrong with your eyes, boy?" His dad would have called him a fag. "There something wrong with you?"  
  
He's sixteen. He remembers Merle at that age, six year old Daryl watching a movie on the couch with Merle and whatever girl he had that week, Merle faking a yawn and feeling her up. Sixteen year olds are meant to be walking hormones. Maybe there is something wrong with him. Maybe he -

No. No, it's not like that. He's not like that. It's just that everything has been so life or death. Who has time for feelings like that, shit that just gets in the way?   
  
Sasha had time, something in his head whispers. Maggie and Glenn, they got married. Rosita and Abraham had fucked in the minibus that first day at the church and people at the prison were always pairing up. Carl was practically following Beth around with his tongue hanging out before the prison fell. Lori got fucking pregnant in the apocalypse. It's just him who doesn't feel anything.   
  
He's - it's not. He's just - Beth is like his sister. She's the only one even close to his age and she's like his sister and it'd be weird to think that way, wrong, when there are other girls around it'll be different, he'll - he's not like that. He's not.   
  
He's not.

"All right," Rick says. He's standing up, looking out the window. "Showtime."  
  
And Daryl goes full force into the plan. That's the only thing he should be thinking about now. It's the only thing that matters.   
  
Get Beth and Carol back. That's all that's left to do. 

* * *

It never goes smooth.

First off, they use Noah as bait and they bump him with the fucking car. He can feel Rick bristling - guess it offends whatever's left of his cop training, using a car against a limping kid.   
  
They've got the two of them on the ground, guns away, fast. It's when the third one that there's a problem. 

They chase them through a ground of rotting, melted walkers, burnt earth. The walkers twist feebly, the skin they have left burnt and raw, even after so many months.   
  
"Two, on me!" Rick says and they run, but there's something not right - that feeling Daryl got in the woods, the creeping sensation of being watched. He opens the door to the burnt out FEMA trailer and - 

The cop Rick didn't see slams into him, knocks him to the ground.   
  
It's a bad mixture of soft and hard - jagged asphalt that melted and cooled into twisted new shapes, a twitching fleshy lump under his back. There's walkers on either side of him, jawing at him, and the cop on top of him has his hands around his throat - he's choking and if he fights too hard he'll land right in biting distance of some walker but Daryl doesn't know how not to fight. He kicks, he twists, he feels his vision slowly go gray as he gropes around for something, anything, his bow, his knife - 

He doesn't find either of those. But he does find the eyesockets of a skull. 

So he slams the walker into the cops head, jaws first, and hopes for the best. 

He's crawling away the second the cop is off him, sputting, trying to get breath - the head is rolling away and the cop is going to come after him again and he doesn't have enough breath to run, he - 

Then there's a shot. And Rick Grimes is there, at the rescue. 

"Okay," the cop says. "You win, asshole."  
  
Which Daryl thinks is pretty rich from the guy who just tried to choke him to death. 

For a second Daryl thinks Rick is going to blow the guys head off, and Daryl's not sure he cares. He's got bleeding scrapes all up and down his arms, soot all over him, his throat feels like he swallowed rocks - 

But the plan is to get Beth and Carol back.   
  
"Rick," he says. His voice hurts just to listen to, and he winces as Rick looks over. "Three's better'n too," he croaks.   
  
So they take them all back with them.

* * *

The good cop is Lamson and the bad cop is Licari and the lady cop, who also sucks in Daryl's opinion, is Shepherd. 

Daryl doesn't get it. Protect and serve. Daryl doesn't understand what they're doing at Grady, how that's protecting or serving. Snatch up people and fix them up and make them slaves so they can snatch more people and fix them up and make them slaves, the fuck does that matter? What is any of that for? It's like they got stuck doing something and they don't understand it doesn't make sense anymore.   
  
The world is different now and these fucks haven't figured it out. 

"If you let us go, we'll take care of Dawn ourselves," Shepherd is saying. "Then we'll let your friends go and this is over."  
  
They'll take over and keep doing the same fucking thing and Daryl doesn't know if any of them understand why except that they need to do something and somehow it's ended up being this.   
  
"No," Lamson says. "We're not doing that."  
  
It's funny how the people in the cuffs are the ones telling Rick what they will and will not do. 

The way Lamson speaks sounds like Rick - slow and measured, eye contact. Daryl almost feels himself getting lulled before he snaps himself out of it.   
  
"Rick," he says. "You're going to want to hear this."  
  
And Rick does.

* * *

They tie them up far from each other - Rick's with Lamson, talking, up until the last second.   
  
"You're still a cop," he hears Rick say.   
  
"No," Lamson says. "No, the real ones are all gone."  
  
Rick walks away, outside. Daryl follows him.   
  
He's at the cop car. Looking at it.   
  
"You ever want to ride in one of these things?" Rick asks as he comes close.   
  
Daryl grunts. "Naw. Saw my dad and Merle ride in 'em plenty, din't look like no fun."  
  
Rick looks at him with a ghost of a smile. "I meant in the front."  
  
"Oh."   
  
"I used to take Carl around in it sometimes. Let him push the buttons. Use the radio. Let him turn on the siren once, would have thought I'd let him drive the whole car." Rick's face is far away. "He used to ride on Shane's lap."  
  
Daryl grimaces, but keeps looking at the car.   
  
"That guy is right in there. Lamson," Rick says. "The real cops are gone."  
  
"I din't -" His voice still feels gravelly, and he clears his throat. "I mean - I din't know anybody that liked cops that much." Rick looks at him. "Assholes mostly," he adds. "All tripped up on - bein' able to make people do what they want them too. Merle caught a warrant once, somethin' dumb, like he an' his friends stole some fireworks or somethin' but they broke down our front door and came in like full SWAT gear an' shit and flipped Merle outta bed in his underwear just 'cause they could. Merle was like sixteen. Dad was pissed about the door."  
  
"Not about Merle?"  
  
"Naw. Figured he dumb enough to get caught, he deserved what he got." Daryl bites his lip. "I mean, I just meant - don't know that bein' a cop means anything special or nothin'."  
  
Rick looks far away again. "It should. It should mean you do good no matter the cost. No matter what it takes. You do good and you help people and you make the world better."  
  
Daryl shrugs uncomfortably. "Dunno, then. Sounds like you're still a cop to me."  
  
Rick is about to answer when they hear the thud above them, the crunch of glass.   
  
"Shit," Rick says, and he's off running.

* * *


	5. Coda

When Rick comes back, it's without Lamson, but Daryl knows he didn't get away.   
  
Tyreese was frantic over Sasha until she woke up but once she woke up she shoved him off.   
  
"Stupid," she says. Her forehead isn't bleeding anymore but it looks swollen and sore. "Fucking stupid, let that guy get behind me -"  
  
"You were trying to do a good thing," Tyreese says.   
  
"Like a fucking kid, hey little girl, want a puppy, just hop on into the backseat of my car -"  
  
Rick comes back without Lamson but even though three was better than two, two can be enough.   
  
It has to be. 

"He was attacked by rotters," Shepherd says. "That's the story."  
  
"Y'said the trade was a bad idea," Daryl says. He looks at her. "What changed?"  
  
"Lamson was our shot. So it's this or you go in guns blazing, right?"  
  
"If this is some bullshit and things go south -" Daryl says.

"I know!" Shepherd's voice cracks and for a moment she's just a woman, tied up, surrounded by men. Then she's back. "Let us help you."  
  
Licari doesn't give a shit, as long as he gets out in one piece. 

Daryl thinks that's probably an easier way to be.   
  
He's not sure when it stopped being his way. 

* * *

On the roof, he's next to Sasha, gun trained on the car. The white cross flickers through the streets.   
  
"You okay?" he asks her. The mark on her head is purpling into a bruise. She looks at him.   
  
"Got a hell of a headache," she says. But he guesses it was a stupid question.   
  
"M'sorry," he says quickly. "Bout Bob. I - Glenn and I found him on a run together." He remembers that guy. The last man standing.   
  
Sasha's lip twists to the side. "Thanks," she says shortly. And Daryl leaves it be.   
  
Besides, the cops are getting out of the car and Daryl has a job to do.   
  
Sometimes it hits him, in moments like this when the threat is small and far away, just a twinge in his stomach left over from the gun training Merle and his dad had given him as a kid. You never point your weapon at someone living unless you want them dead.   
  
Daryl still follows that rule. But the amount of people he wants dead has changed a lot. And in moments like this, looking down the scope like it's Call of Duty or some shit, it hits him, a kind of weird double vision. He's not meant to be doing this.   
  
But he is. 

A walker stumbles towards the group and Daryl lines up the shot. He's closer, he -   
  
"Let me," Sasha says, and he remembers. She has the silencer. 

She takes it out, neat, clean, minimal fuss. The walker collapses. 

From this far away, everything looks like a video game.

* * *

It's actually going to work. 

The hallway is crowded with people - them, the two officers they took, the phalanx of officers on the other side, Beth and Carol. Beth is banged up - stitches on her face like two half moons, a cast on her wrist. Daryl remembers the little walker from the shelter, the pink and purple butterfly on the decaying plaster. 

Carol looks rough too - Beth is pushing her and she's slumped over a little, obviously favoring one side, her face a little bruised. But she's alive, and she's coming forward and so is Beth.  
  
"Holster your weapons," the woman in the hallway - Dawn, he guesses - says, and Rick turns over his shoulder at them.   
  
"You too."

They're going slow, so slow. Daryl feels his bow bumping against his back as he holds Licari's arm down the hall.   
  
"They haven't been harmed," Rick says as they stop. Which is more than Daryl can say for Carol or Beth, both of whom look like shit and it's all their fault. 

"Where's Lamson?"  
  
A look between all of them, a stillness. But Shepherds doesn't hesitate.   
  
"Rotters got him."  
  
He feels Licari inhale and he tenses. If it's going to fuck up, it's going to fuck up here, with this guy who doesn't give a shit -   
  
"We saw it go down."  
  
"I'm sorry to hear that," Dawn says, but she doesn't sound sorry at all. "He was one of the good guys."  
  
Daryl wonders if there are any good guys anymore.

"One of yours for one of mine."  
  
And they switch.   
  
It's like a bizarre intricate dance - the shuffle of the cuffed cop as Daryl pushes him down the hallway, the smooth movement of Carol in the chair. He can see Carol rolling his way and he doesn't breathe until the switch has been made, until Carol and Licari are even and Licari goes one way and Carol goes the other. Then Daryl is wheeling her back and she doesn't say anything but her hand finds his where it grips the handles of her chair and she squeezes.   
  
He sees Rick move with Shepherd and hears the scuff of Beth's boots on the floor behind him. It's going to work, it's going to - 

"Glad we could work things out," Dawn says. A rustle of wind behind her, a dissatisfied murmur. "Now I just need Noah. And then you can leave."  
  
Daryl turns. They all do. Beth is right there in front of him, her ponytail neat, that same yellow shirt she took from the golf place. She's staring at Dawn.   
  
Noah is to his side. He sees him, from the corner of his eye, tense up. Resigned. Hunted.   
  
Noah is limping forward but Daryl puts an arm up. Keeps him back. The door is so close. They can get everyone out of it, then Rick's the only one who has to run, and Daryl could get off a shot from here - 

"That wasn't the deal."  
  
"Noah was my ward." She says it like it means something, like it means she's his parent or guardian, like he's a ward of the state. "Beth took his place and I'm losing her, so I'm going to need him back."  
  
"Ma'am, please, it's not -" he hears Shepherd say, and Dawn snaps at her.  
  
Noah is already shuffling forward, his half hopping walk. Daryl tugs at his sleeve, shakes his head.   
  
"Hold up," he says, his mouth barely moving. "Wait it out."  
  
"My officers put their lives on the line to find him. One of them died."  
  
"Naw," Daryl says, as Noah keeps trying to move forward. "He ain't stayin'!"  
  
"He's one of mine. You have no claim on him."  
  
The word claim makes Daryl flinch, and it does something to Rick too. He tenses. 

"The boy wants to go home so you have no claim on him." Rick practically spits the words and Daryl is ready, one word from Rick and his bow will be out and he'll nail this bit in the eye, fuck her, thinking she can take a claim on a person, that she can own them, fuck - 

"Well then, we don't have a deal."  
  
"The deal is done -"

Then there's a shot and he looks at Rick, alarmed, but Rick is fine, just surprised. And spattered with blood.   
  
Officer Dawn falls, limp and dead, to the ground, her forehead missing.   
  
Shepherd is behind her. Gun drawn.   
  
"The deal is done," she repeats, calmly. She holsters her weapon again. "It's over. You can go."  
  
And they do. All of them.   
  
Beth's rough plaster cast is awkward to hold but she grabs his hand and he's not going to be the one to let go first.   
  
"I knew you'd find me," she says, and she looks at everybody with such a look, joy and disbelief and fear and relief all mixed up into one, like her face hasn't caught up with her brain. "You found everyone."  
  
"Naw," he says as the go down the stairs, Carol on his other side, supporting herself on the bannister and against Tyreese. "They found me."

And outside there's a fire engine smeared with blood and the rest of their people and when Maggie sees Beth she runs like a kid, sprinting, she drops her gun like it doesn't even matter, like the only thing that's important is that she get to Beth right now, that she hold her.   
  
And the two sisters are sobbing, sobbing in each other's arms and he feels Carol's hand on his shoulder and he looks at her. Banged up, bruised, but not broken. Not her. 

Not any of them. 

"We found you," he hears Maggie saying. "We found you, Beth, Beth -"  
  
They'd found her. They'd found each other. Somehow, after the prison, scattering to the four winds, their paths had all converged again.   
  
And it's enough. It's more than enough.   
  
It's everything.

* * *

They figure out their new path. Shirewilt is north, Virginia, and Rick and them are planning a route. He's sitting next to Carol - Beth hasn't left Maggie's side. Beth's lying with her head in Maggie's lap and Maggie is stroking her hair, soft, very soft. Maggie is singing, which Maggie rarely does even though Maggie has a good voice. It's not like Beth's though and Daryl wonders what it was like when they were younger and the world was different, when stuff like that could fester between siblings, become something jealous. But now it's just the two of them against the whole world and Maggie is singing to Beth, something lilting and slow, an Irish lullaby.   
  
"A good days work," Carol says. She's moving stiffly - her ribs are bruised and Beth said maybe there were internal injuries - but she's moving okay and she lowers herself down to sit next to Daryl on the very edge of the fire. Noah is sitting next to Carl. He can't look like he really believes it. He just keeps looking at everyone, the fire, the road, Judith, but especially at Beth, glances that aren't sneaky but that he probably thinks are really sneaky.   
  
Daryl grunts. He's got a stick in his hand and he scrapes it over the dirt. "Din't do nothin'. Just with the others."  
  
"You know that's not true."   
  
Daryl shrugs.   
  
"You play a big game, Daryl Dixon. But you're just a marshmallow under all of that. I can tell. I know you."  
  
He risks a glance at Carol. "Yeah?" he asks.   
  
She reaches over with her not sore arm and brushes his hair out of his face. "Yeah," she says. "I do."  
  
He knows her too. He doesn't know how to say it - words, they trip him up, they always - but Carol just brushes his hair out of his eyes one more time and lets her hand rest on his cheek.   
  
"You ever left Georgia before?" Carol asks, and he shakes his head.   
  
"Naw. No reason to."  
  
Carol smiles. "Well. A new place. A new start. For all of us." Her thumb strokes his cheek and he realizes he's still banged up a little from Joe and the Claimers. It feels like years ago that he was alone. "For you and me."  
  
"Yeah?" he asks, and he can hear his voice, stupid and hopeful. It'll bite him in the ass later, he knows, but for now he doesn't care. He just wants to hear the answer.   
  
"Yeah," she says softly. "You're stuck with me, kid."  
  
"Ain't a kid," he mumbles.   
  
It's more than enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry to keep everyone on tenterhooks re: Beth for so long - the Grady stuff is pointless but I love the episode Consumed so I kept it in. But Beth lives! Hurray!


	6. What Happened and What's Going On

It takes them more than two weeks to get north and it's harder than Daryl thinks.   
  
He misses the dirt bike fiercely. They have two vehicles that are reasonably roomy but there's enough of them that both vehicles feel cramped and even when people switch around their seats you're still always stuck with the same people you were stuck with yesterday and the same people you'll be stuck with tomorrow. Sometimes he wastes the time playing with Judith, peekaboo or patty-cake or blowing raspberries on her stomach. But even baby giggles can give you a headache and there are hours where Judith does nothing but scream. Carol reads and Beth sings and Carl and he play some dumb game they made up with their fingers which normally ends with someone flipping someone off, and the preacher drones about gospel and good and evil and Abraham and Eugene can't be in the same car as each other and occasionally Judith spits up everywhere. And this is the part of the trip that is easy.   
  
Daryl did the math one day, when he was bored and claustrophobic and Carl was pissing him off and Abraham, who was driving, said if everyone didn't shut up for a minute he was going to run them all into a ditch. If they had been able to take I-85 almost the whole way up, it would have been like 530 miles, according to the map that Abraham keep pouring over. If the speed limit was 65 miles an hour, then it would have taken them eight hours. Which would have been long enough, trapped in a car with a baby who can't help but shit herself and a pastor who tells him he's going to hell and Beth, Beth who he likes normally, who just keeps humming under her breath. 

But it doesn't take them eight hours. It doesn't take them eight days.   
  
It takes them sixteen days and each one of them drives Daryl crazy.   
  
Some days are better than others. Some days they walk. They'll lose a vehicle and half of them will speed ahead to the next town, to scout out a replacement, and half of them will start walking. Daryl always volunteers to walk. They kept the radios they took from Shepherd and Licari and Lamsom and the advance crew radios every twenty minutes and the rear guard just keeps trudging. Some days both the cars break down and they all have to walk. Those are Daryl's favorite. Once they split up into four cars because they couldn't find any big enough to fit all of them, and that was okay, but they'd needed to refill gas constantly and Rick said it wasn't worth it. So now it's two cars or walking and of the options, Daryl prefers to walk. 

He thought they'd be walking when they left Georgia. Thought he'd be able to stand at the border a second, reflect. Stand one foot on either side of the state line, his past and his future, say goodbye, maybe. But they aren't walking that day. They're driving and Daryl fell asleep with his head crammed up at a painful angle against the window, and when he wakes up Carl sniggers at him.   
  
"You drooled all over yourself man, gross."

Daryl wipes at his mouth quick. Looks out the window. Trees and grass and asphalt whizzing by, a blur of green and brown and gray. "Where are we?"  
  
Carl shrugs. "I don't know. We passed a sign for Chattanooga, but it was like an hour ago."  
  
So he doesn't say goodbye. He doesn't say anything. They just keep driving.   
  
That's the other thing - the route they take is fucking crazy. The plan was to follow I-85 as close as they could using backroads and local traffic and shit but that plan goes south pretty quick and they just take whatever road is open and figure it out from there. Sometimes it's walkers in their path but other time it's cars, all smashed together or stalled in ghostly traffic, and other times it's nature taking back what belongs to her. There are roads with huge trees blocking them, roads flooded with mud or with huge sinkholes or roads that are almost like driving over gravel they're so rough. Once they get stuck between walkers and a tree and they have to abandon the car and make a break for a warehouse in the distance, where they find a Caterpillar which Rick rides out the next morning, grinding the walkers on the road to mush. Why are they swinging through Tennessee to get to Virginia? And at one point they actually dipped back into Georgia before cutting up through North Carolina and still nobody told him until they stopped for the night so he missed the chance to say goodbye twice.   
  
He hates traveling this way. He misses the leaves underfoot and overhead, the stars he can read by night, the rustle of game in the forest. They stop early enough most days to set up camp for the night and Daryl goes out hunting, which they need, because they can't fit sixteen days worth of food for sixteen people in their stupid cars even if they were to magically happen over 768 meals. Yeah, Daryl did the math, which was how fucking terribly bored he was. You know shit is bad when you're doing math for a fun distraction. And Daryl sucks at math, so it took him a long time too.   
  
But they need him to hunt and he needs it too, needs the time in the quiet, away from all the people who talk and push close and want things from him, who ask questions and want answers and want him to chat or play games or be fun and Daryl can't give it to them how they want it. He feels his temper winding shorter and shorter until he knows it's just a matter of time before he goes off on somebody in a locked car and that's going to suck.   
  
He volunteers to take night watches, partially because it means he's likely to sleep for a chunk of the next day rattling around in the car, but also because it means he sits on the roof of the car or the hood, his bow perched on his knees, watching instead of crammed into one of the cars, folded into the front seat or sprawled on the floor, and he doesn't share the spillover blanket and tarp with anybody either. He can't do it. He doesn't know why. Joe didn't even fucking do anything to him. Rick killed him before he could. He hadn't done anything except sleep with his arm around Daryl, something that prior to Joe had happened a number of times over the first long winter when they'd all nearly froze to death. Joe didn't touch him, Joe hadn't done anything to him. But still sleeping so close to the others, huddled together, them touching him, pressing up against his back makes his skin crawl and his spine itch and it's better on watch. He's alone with the stars and with one other person, perched on the other car, and it's the only time in those days that he can actually breathe. 

He's sitting by the fire one night, maybe a week and a half in, and Carol is sitting next to him, which she normally does. They haven't talked about what happened in Atlanta before they found Beth, and maybe they don't need to. Maybe they already said everything. But there's a shyness there that wasn't there in the prison. Like they're having to re-familiarize themselves with each other. Which they do mostly with silence. Which Daryl likes.   
  
But Carol is sitting next to him that night and running her hands through her hair - detangling it, maybe. It's longer than Daryl's ever seen it, which still isn't that long. Even on the road during the long winter she's kept it clipped short, and at the prison.   
  
"I need a haircut," she informs him, and he shrugs.   
  
"Got my knife. Could give you - " But she's smacking his arm so he just grins and pokes at the fire with a stick. People are starting to turn in - Abraham and Rosita off in the woods somewhere for a conjugal visit before bed, Glenn and Maggie probably too. Beth is there, and Noah. Noah is shy around Beth suddenly, like he doesn't know how whatever they had in the hospital will translate. She's nice to him, they're nice to each other, but she likes Daryl more. Which Daryl likes. Rick is with Carl, pouring over the map.   
  
"Don't even think about it," she says. She reaches over to him and brushes his hair out of his eyes. "You could use a haircut too, my friend."  
  
Daryl feels himself stiffen and he doesn't know why. He hasn't had a haircut - a real haircut - since everything went down. His dad used to buzz his head every month or so and he'd liked not having to cut it - liked how it hid his face, how it gave him somewhere to retreat to. It looked cool, he thought. But now Carol is brushing his hair out of his eyes and her fingers are too close and he finds himself flinching back, honest to god flinching around her like some pussy bitch.   
  
"Why? I look like a fag?" he says, and Carol starts too. Looks closer at him.   
  
"I - Daryl, no. I just thought - "  
  
"Yeah, no, you're right," he says brusquely. "Look like a fuckin' girl now. Should chop it a'ready."  
  
"Daryl, I didn't say that," Carol says quietly. "I don't - I like your hair."  
  
He had too. But then he's looking at Noah and Beth, Noah inching to sit closer to Beth, he's thinking about Abraham and Rosita off in the woods, about Glenn and Maggie, and he feels like he fucked up somewhere and he shouldn't have hair like this and maybe that's why - 

But he's not like that. He's not. He - 

Carol is staring at him like he's speaking in tongues and he can see Rick and Carl glancing up from the map - he was too loud, maybe. He bites his lip and nods.   
  
"Naw, yeah, I - whatever. Never mind."

There's a long moment of silence. Rick and Carl go back to whatever they're doing. He's looking at the fire instead, his chest a writhing mass of knots, and he's cracking his knuckles over and over.   
  
He's not some fag. He's not. He's not a degenerate or - he just doesn't like anyone. Because the world is broken and letting people get close is a bad idea and he's already let Carol in. He doesn't have room for anyone else. That's all. But maybe he should cut his hair. Because what if it makes people think he's - because people wouldn't like it, he knows that. Oh sure, they wouldn't tar the shit out of him like his pops or Merle would, but they'd make him leave, probably. Even if they let him stay, it wouldn't be the same. Carl would be weird, and they probably wouldn't let him around Judy. Maggie and Beth and that preacher would hate him for being a sodomite or whatever the fuck the bible word was for it, and cops didn't like fags either, did they?   
  
What if that's the reason Joe was going to - because Joe had said, Joe had said he liked women. Maybe Joe had just picked him because he was a fag and Joe could tell, maybe just by looking at him, maybe - 

Something shifts next to him and he jumps, but it's just Carol scootching closer.   
  
"Daryl," she says quietly. "I like your hair."  
  
Daryl just nods.  
  
"I - I'm sorry. I know people can be -" She swallows. "I'm - I get sensitive about my hair too."  
  
"Ain't sensitive," Daryl argues back automatically. He looks at Carol's hair though. "Why?"  
  
Short hair is a dyke thing on ladies. Right? But she'd been married to Ed so that probably wasn't -  
  
"I -" She looks around but everyone is off on their own business. Still, her voice lowers and she moves even closer to him. "Just - I had long hair before, when I was -" She trails off. "Ed used to -"  
  
Daryl remembers his father at Woodbury, when they fought. Yanking his hair, pulling his head around. His scalp throbs once in remembered pain.   
  
"Yeah," Daryl says quick.   
  
She seems relieved he doesn't make her say it. "So one day I got his razor from the bathroom and I just - cut it off." She runs her fingers through her hair again. "Sophia started crying when I came out. She was little, maybe two or three. She thought my hair got stuck in the toilet when I flushed and it'd been ripped off."  
  
Daryl laughs - a sharp, sudden thing, a noise he wasn't expecting from himself. Carol smiles at him.   
  
"Yeah. Set potty-training back a bit." She smiles a little wider.   
  
"My dad used to buzz mine," he says before he knows he's saying it. "Every month. In the yard." He remembers kids from the neighborhood, when he was six or seven, laughing about it as his dad practically shaved him bald in front of everybody.   
  
"I like it long," Carol says. "It suits you." 

He runs a hand self consciously through his hair. "Yeah?"  
  
"Yes. Very handsome."   
  
He pulls a face. "Stop."  
  
She laughs. He looks at her.   
  
"I like your hair too," he says.   
  
"Well, thanks, pookie."  
  
He scowls at her. "I mean - I like it both ways. Short and now." He looks into the fire.   
  
"Thanks, Daryl. But I think -" She reaches up, runs her fingers through her hair once more. "I think short hair is more me."

* * *

When they finally get close to Shirewilt, they split up. Rick's never letting anybody walk into a Terminus situation ever again. They have plan after plan and Rick drills them in it every night at the campfire, everyone's job, what to do if someone gets incapacitated or captured. Noah seems confused every time they drill.   
  
"It's my family," he says to Beth once after Rick made them go over the plan once more for if Rick got taken out by a sniper and Glenn was in charge. "They're not going to do anything."  
  
At this point, Beth has seen Woodbury, has seen what happened to the prison. Lived through Grady. Has heard, from Maggie, about Terminus. (Has probably heard too much about Terminus - Daryl walks past a sister conversation in which Maggie is crying, "I thought you were dead, Daryl said you'd been taken and I thought they'd got you before we got there, thought they'd already -")  
  
"They won't do anything to you," Beth says kindly. And goes over the plan again.  
  
The plan is the advance guard - Tyreese, Glenn, Noah, Michonne, and Rick - go up in one of the vans. It'll be the quietest and most spacious trip anyone has had since they left Georgia. They'll approach through the woods and scope it out. If the place hasn't fallen, if it's what Noah says, then they'll radio Carol and go in. If they go in and everything still looks good, they'll radio Carol and Carol will drive the rest of them over. Carl, Judith, Daryl, and Beth will wait in the van while the others go in and check it out further. When they're totally sure, the rear guard - 'the kid table,' Carl called them in a slightly bitter tone - will come in.   
  
And if it's good, they'll stay.   
  
If it's bad, they'll leave.   
  
If at any point someone tries to split them up, they go.  
  
If at any point during the initial operation the advance group is out of radio contact for more than 20 minutes, Carol drives the van over and the others come and get them. It's why Rick split them up and left so many people behind - he's got a well stocked rescue team. "If they're friendly, we don't need fifteen people to take it," Rick says. (Daryl thinks it's funny how they always include Judith in the count even though she couldn't take anything.) "But if they aren't, we'll need ten people behind to get us home."  
  
Noah watches with a bemused look on his face. But maybe Grady made him understand something too, because he stops telling them there's nothing to worry about. 

The new world is nothing but things to worry about. 

* * *

It's a weird vibe when the advanced group takes off. It's not like there aren't still a lot of people around, but everything is emptier after more than two weeks crammed up against each other, and the group feels hollow without Rick, Glenn, Tyreese, Michonne. Everyone is trying to relax and pretend that they aren't waiting for their world to change in an hour, but no one is actually able to relax or move too far away from the van in case they get the call it's time to go. Carol sits with the radio in the front seat, the door open and her legs dangling over the side, listening. Any time someone tries to talk to her she responds in monosyllables until the others go away. It's the first time Rick has left her in charge and Daryl can see her taking it seriously. It means something, after Ed, after everything, to be depended on. Daryl gets it.   
  
It's also the first time since they left Grady that Beth isn't with Maggie or Noah. Noah's on the trip and Maggie is sitting watch on the roof of the van, gun in her lap. With Glenn gone, se clearly doesn't want to talk to anybody either. The others are scattered around their campsite, within distance, and Carol tells him he can't go hunt because she needs him ready to go if they get the call. So he's trying to make bolts again when Beth comes and sits next to him.   
  
"When're you gonna give me another lesson with your bow?"  
  
He peeks at her from under his bangs. Shrugs. "Dunno. Not today."  
  
"Yeah." She's quiet. "I - I know I haven't really said, since we - but I knew you'd find me. I really did."  
  
How can these people have such faith in him when he never found Sophia? Every time it's like something small and precious they hand over to him, not knowing he's more likely to drop it or squish it than to keep it alive. He shrugs.   
  
"You'd've done it for me."  
  
"Yeah. I would have." She's quiet. "Maggie - "  
  
"She wanted to find you too," Daryl says. Remembers her voice in the dark boxcar of Terminus. She's alive? "She did, she just -"  
  
"She got scared," Beth says. "I get it. Sometimes it's easier not to look, I guess, then to look and find something different than what you want." Beth is so quiet though. "But you didn't stop looking." 

He did. "We just got lucky," he says. "Carol'n'me, we hadn't seen that car, we wouldn't a -"  
  
"But you did." Beth takes one of the slivers he whittled off of the branch he's working on and spins it between her fingers. "It doesn't - I love Maggie. I'm not mad at her."  
  
But there's something different there that wasn't there before, something Daryl recognizes. Even people you think you can count on, sometimes you can't. It ain't their fault. Just - sometimes you can't.   
  
He thinks about Carol, clutching the radio somewhere behind him. Thinks about her face, _I'm not good enough for you.  
  
_ Maybe he can't count on her either. But she said she wouldn't leave him behind, and he thinks he can count on that much. And the rest - 

Well. It's more than he's ever had before.   
  
"You'd've been a'right even if we hadn't shown up," he mumbles. "Got Noah out all by yourself. You're fuckin' tough, Greene."  
  
"Yeah, well. You're not so bad yourself, Dixon." She nudges him with her hip and he flinches a little, his hand slipping on the knife, gouging a line into the otherwise smooth bolt.   
  
"Fuck," he says, and he snaps it in half.   
  
"Sorry, I - I forgot."   
  
She hadn't forgotten. He'd been jumpier, he knew, since the Claimers, since Joe. He didn't know why, it wasn't like anything had even really happened, certainly nothing that hadn't happened a hundred times before - he'd had worse lickings from his dad when he was in elementary school. But something about it, about the thoughts that crawl over him every so often (whatifI'mafagwhatif) makes the heat of Beth's hip against his feel like a brand.   
  
"Forget it," he mumbles. He gets a new stick. Starts again.   
  
"Can I help?"  
  
He kicks a stick her way. "Try'n make it a cylinder," he says, and she does.   
  
It's nice, sitting with her in silence. It's like the days on the road between the cabin and the funeral home, just the two of them against everything and coming out on top. It's like Grady and the Claimers never happened.   
  
"Maggie's looking for scissors," she says after a while. "She wants to - she tried to get the stitches out with her knife but my daddy'd roll over in his grave."  
  
Neither of them say that Hershel has no grave and no body to roll over.  
  
"It's filthy and way too big."  
  
He looks at Beth. The cuts look nearly healed and clean - they're noticeable, but the edges look like they've come together all right. They'll heal up good.   
  
"I know," she says to his look. He sees her lips go up in a forced smile. "There goes my great beauty."  
  
"Ain't gone nowhere," he says, looking away. He thinks about his own back, rough and ridged, lined with marks that'll never go away. Thinks of the thin lines on his front and back from when he fell on the bolt and Hershel stitched him up. Some nights, when he's trying to sleep, he finds himself running his fingers over it, or the one on his head where Andrea almost shot him. 

He remembers the beginning of the first long winter, in the back of the car with Hershel as he removed the stitches and dropped them into a cupholder.   
  
"We all have scars," Daryl says, and for a moment he can feel Hershel right behind him, touching his shoulder. "Yours just mean you're brave. Better'n what mine mean."  
  
He's never referenced his scars so openly before, not to her. Sure, she's seen them - probably everyone has, a glimpse here or there, and they'd been alone for a while together. But most people won't mention them, look away. His mean he's damaged - mean he was too stupid to listen or too loud or too quiet, a fuck up who was fucked up. Maybe a few, the one on his head hidden under his hair, the ones on his side - maybe those ones mean that once, he tried to do something good and, even if he'd messed it up, someone had tried to put him back together.   
  
But the rest just mean he's trash with bad blood whose own dad couldn't figure out how to like him in fourteen years. 

"Yours mean that too."  
  
He shrugs.   
  
"I - I guess I just worry I'll always - remember it. Because every time I look in the mirror they'll be - right there, looking back at me. And I don't - I don't want to remember it."  
  
Her voice is low and rough and Daryl wonders what Grady was like. Noah'd said enough for them to know it was bad, but something in her voice tells him she's talking about something different.   
  
"They - din't hurt you, did they?" He asks, and he feels stupid the second he says it. Of course they did. They'd marked her up and broke her arm and kept her there and made her scared. They'd hurt her enough even if they hadn't done anything else.   
  
She shakes her head. "No. But -" She stops. "I killed a guy."  
  
Beth had killed more walkers than Daryl knew how to count. But she'd never killed a person, that she knew. Sure, maybe in one skirmish or another against the Governor, maybe, but - maybe not. She's been out in the woods for the first one, and in the second - 

"I - I didn't have to do it," she says. "He wasn't - trying to kill me, or anything. He was just going to - " She stops, shakes her head. "I wouldn't have died."  
  
Something would have, though.   
  
Daryl doesn't know what to say. Thinks about Joe, out on the tracks, about agreeing that Joe wouldn't have to force him. He hadn't killed Joe, and if he had -   
  
"Good," Daryl says roughly, and Beth looks at him.   
  
"Yeah," she whispers, and he can hear the knife digging harder into the stick. "Good."   
  
They're quiet again for a while.   
  
"You were alone," Daryl says. He remembers Rick saying it to him, the morning after Joe, and he understands why now. "You do what you gotta."  
  
"I just - now that I'm away from it, I wonder if I - had to."  
  
"You did," Daryl says.   
  
"It wasn't just him. I killed a patient, by accident, I - and there were two other officers, I -"  
  
"Beth," he says quietly. He doesn't say names a lot, and it makes her look at him. "You do what you gotta. You wouldn't do anythin' you din't hafta do." He thinks about Joe and feels himself shiver. "We all got scars," he says instead.   
  
Something flashes in Beth's eyes, and she nods again. "Yeah," she says quietly. "I guess we do." 

They're still there, whittling, when the radio crackles to life. 

Everything stops. Eyes fixed on Carol, on the car. He can see Maggie, sitting on the roof over Carol, her hands gripping tight around her gun. The people at the edge of camp start moving in, like they're ready to jump in the car, ready to go, whatever is coming. 

"Carol, you copy?" Rick's voice rings out, tinged with static.   
  
"We're here," Carol says right away. He sees her hand inching towards the ignition, checking that the keys are there.  
  
"We made it. It's gone."

And the air changes.

* * *

No one says anything now. No one pretends to relax. Everyone's just getting ready for when they have to leave. 

"Where are we going to go now?" Rosita says suddenly. She looks a little stunned. "Back?"  
  
"Ain't no going back," Abraham says. "Just gotta go forward."  
  
"Where is that?"  
  
He shakes his head. "Don't know."  
  
Eugene seems like he's trying to make himself small next to Tara. "Washington is still a most viable option," he says to her. Probably he's trying to be quiet, but he isn't and Daryl can see, even from the distance, Rosita put her hand on Abraham's arm, Abraham's hand clench into a fist. "Infrastructure built to -"  
  
"Eugene. Shut up," Tara says, but not meanly.   
  
"Doesn't matter where," Sasha says. Her eyes are tired. "It'll be the same thing it always is. It'll be gone. And if it isn't? Maybe it'll be good. Until it isn't anymore. Until it's gone too."  
  
The clearing is silenced.   
  
Judith starts to fuss, and that seems to snap something into Maggie. "Then we'll make it good," she says fiercely. "We ain't going to stop looking until we find a place. And if we can't find one, we'll make it. There's still -" Her eyes find Beth. "There's still good things if we know how to find them." Now she's looking at Daryl. "Or make them. We been out here a long time, but when we find the right place? We'll stop. And we'll -" Maggie struggles to find a word. "We'll get to live again instead of just breathing." 

Everyone is staring at her and Judith keeps fussing. "Give her to me," Maggie says to Carl, hopping down from the top of the truck, arms out.   
  
"I'll take watch," Abraham says, but Carol looks at his bulk and shakes her head.   
  
"Tara, you take watch." Tara clambers up, leaving Eugene alone. He curls into himself.   
  
Abraham and Rosita go off to the woods - "Just a little walk," Rosita says. She steers Abraham as far from Eugene as possible.   
  
Eugene, alone, comes over to where Beth and Daryl are sitting.   
  
"What're you makin'?" he asks.   
  
"Bolts for Daryl's bow," Beth says. Eugene nods.   
  
"Now, I ain't ever fired a crossbow myself, but I have read a staggerin' amount of fiction, often set in pseudo-medieval societies - pretty accurate if you look aside from the dragons an' occasional wyvern - and to my mind -"  
  
And then they're stuck with Eugene. 

* * *

Until the radio cracks to life and whatever they thought was coming is different. 

"Tyreese -" comes out of the radio and Sasha, from where she's mending her jacket, stiffens.   
  
"Bit - arm - coming!"

The camp is a flurry of movement. Whatever they've started to break down is being hastily pulled out again, Carol is spreading out the tarp, Sasha is trying to get into the car, to get to Tyreese -  
  
"They're coming back here," Maggie says, "And if he's bit they're probably gonna amputate, or we're going to have to as soon as they're back, which means we need to set up a spot to do that now! So quit fighting and help!"  
  
And then Sasha does.   
  
Whatever booze they have is being handed over, the limited medical supplies - more bandages, which is good, no painkillers or antibiotics, which is bad -   
  
"Carol - we're at the car - we need to cauterize the arm and wrap it."  
  
"Build up that fire," Carol snaps, and Beth and Daryl, who are already nearby, start stoking it as quick as they can. Carl runs off to the woods for more wood. Carol picks a machete, the widest they have, and shoves it into the flames, balancing it on the rock.   
  
"Get the kids and Sasha away - they don't need to see this!" Rick says from the radio, and Sasha shoves at Maggie as Maggie tries to help her up.  
  
"You think I'm leavin' my brother -"  
  
"Go get more wood. We need this fire hotter if we want any chance -"  
  
"I'm not going anywhere til Ty -"  
  
"We'll go," Beth says, and she grabs Daryl's hand and they are running, running.   
  
Abraham and Rosita are sprinting out of the woods - Rosita looking a little mussed from their walk - and they hardly exchange any words.  
  
"Anythin' that'll light quick," Daryl is saying. "Dry stuff, already on the ground, stuff that'll -"  
  
"Yeah," Beth says, and then they don't waste time on words and just look.   
  
They come back heavily laden and drop what they've got near the fire. Rosita is there and just nods. The fire is now closer to a bonfire than the little campfire that was practically embers that they started with. The camp is transformed - there's an operating area, the tarp folded into a neat rectangle, their paltry medical supplies lined up alongside, plus a couple bottles of booze from someone's private stash. Probably Abraham's. There's a bucket of water next to the site and a stewpot full of water hanging over the fire. They almost run into Tara who's darting off to the stream with her arms full of water bottles.   
  
Carol's got her sleeves rolled up and is scrubbing at her hands in the bucket of water the best she can. She starts pouring some of the booze over her fingers, rubbing them back and forth vigorously.   
  
"Maybe you should save that -" Maggie is saying. "The pain -"  
  
"He'll black out when it gets bad," Carol says, her eyes steely. "And it's no good him not feeling anything if I give him an infection from all this dirt -"  
  
"Carol," the radio crackles, and everyone freezes.   
  
"He's gone."

* * *

No one can look at the camp - set up to save a man they didn't even get a chance to see. It speaks of a hope that seems worthless and stupid, and the blazing fire and the white hot knife and the sad little pile of bandages feels like it's laughing at them.   
  
Carol goes back to the car and closes the door. Sasha isn't moving. She hasn't moved since the radio. Abraham slams his hands down on the hood of the van.   
  
"Damn it!"   
  
Rosita puts a hand on his shoulder but he shrugs her off. Stalks over to the medical area, snatches back his bottles of booze. Storms away.   
  
The preacher, who hasn't been much help in any of this, is watching them all with frightened eyes, clutching his prayer book. "I - I'll prepare," he says, and turns away. Daryl wants to deck him.   
  
In the end, Maggie is the one who cleans up. She folds up the tarp. She gathers the medical supplies. She pulls the knife out of the fire and sinks it into the bucket of water Carol was washing her hands in.   
  
It sizzles and steam puffs into the air.   
  
Tara comes running back, the water bottles filled up. "It's not clean but if we start filtering now by the time we need it maybe - " But she stops.   
  
It's over before they even have a chance to try. 

* * *

It's not until the advance group gets back, Tyreese wrapped in a sheet, that they see Noah isn't there either. 

But they don't even have his body to bury.


	7. Them

They lose Noah and they lose Tyreese and they lose their luck. 

It took them sixteen days to go 530 miles and in the week that follows, they only go forty. They lose a van on the second day and they cram all of them into the remaining van, which Daryl hates. They couldn't fit sixteen people in one twelve passenger van, but they can fit fourteen, especially when one is a baby who rides on laps. It's too close and after a day they rip out the seats and huddle along the walls, in the center of the floor. Which is maybe less safe but is the only bearable way to travel. It also means whoever is driving has to take it slower, and it means that when the second van breaks down, there is still sixty miles between them and Washington and all the creeks have dried up. 

All the good feeling that buoyed them after they found Beth has dried up to. It had even before the van troubles and the water shortage, before they ran out of food and before Daryl couldn't find anything to hunt - which was when he started to get really worried about the water. It's hard to lose Noah - to realize they took sixteen days and five hundred miles for nothing, to watch a kid get killed. But Tyreese, his gentle presence, his steadiness, is a gut punch none of them saw coming. And for him to die like that, from the procedure that was meant to save him, makes everyone feel like there is something that could have gone differently. 

So they're in Richmond, Virginia and their next destination is miles away and there's nothing to drink and Daryl doesn't know how to fix it. This isn't Georgia and it shouldn't make a difference, but when he goes out something feels off, something Daryl can't name or adjust for. It's probably because of the drought, but he wonders if it's because he's a Georgia boy and Georgia is gone from under him. He doesn't share this with anybody else. it just twirls around and around in his head as he chews his fingernails and sweats and searches, searches for water or food or a van, searches for something that might never come. 

They've gone too far to go back but not far enough for safety and the walkers behind them are slowly gaining on them. On top of all that, Sasha is losing it. 

It starts with the preacher offering to talk. 

"If you ever want to talk - about Tyreese, or about -"

"Stop," Sasha says. Which was remarkably restrained. Daryl probably would have decked him, although it wouldn't take much - the preacher gets on his nerves. 

"When you're ready, I'm -"

"Just because you said some words over his grave doesn't mean you knew him," Sasha hisses. 

"I know you're in pain -"

"You know shit," Sasha says fiercely. "You know what I know? My brother couldn't help himself because he was so busy helping other people. Always. Since we were kids. And you? You were so busy helping yourself you let your whole flock, people who needed you, who looked to you, you let them die."

Father Gabriel flinches like she hit him. 

"So don't give me any shit about being there for me or waiting until I'm ready to talk. Ty was the person I looked to, and he never let me down like that. He never would. So fuck you."

That's when Daryl figures it's time to go hunting. It's going to get ugly anyway, but it's going to get uglier if they don't have any food or water. And the death march, the silent drudge, isn't doing anything for him.

Carol comes with him. They walk for a while in silence. The buzzing of insects makes Daryl's stomach clench. Because where there's insects there out to be water, or birds eating the bugs, or - something. But there's nothing. He eats a worm and Carol wrinkles her nose at him. He swallows it. Wipes his mouth with a gritty hand. 

"Y'want one?" It wasn't like he liked the worms but they were something. He remembers that time when he was a kid and he got lost, his insides turning over and over. He'd eaten worms and dandelion leaves and even grass. Sometimes when he ate a worm he felt bad - he was getting something more than everybody else, that wasn't fair - but then every time he offered, like now, the person he offers it to just looks sick and shakes their head. 

"I'm good," Carol says. They go a little further. "Anything?"

She wouldn't ask if she weren't desperate. She knows the second he saw something, he'd have told her. 

"Naw," he says. "It's too dry."

There's nothing there. 

"Maybe we should start back," she says, and Daryl shifts his shoulders. Imagines the look on everybody's face when they reappear from the trees. The hope. 

The way it would turn so quick to disappointment, maybe even despair. 

"Naw," he says again. "You go. I - I'll keep looking."

But she doesn't go. She stays right there. 

"I'm sorry about Noah," Carol says, and Daryl just shrugs again - a little angrily, but not at her. 

"Tell Beth," he grunts. "She's the one who knew 'im." He hadn't known the other boy hardly at all, just what he'd picked up in those days before Grady, what he'd gleaned from sixteen days of the world's worst road trip. 

"I have. But still."

"Y'think we woulda found her?" Daryl asks suddenly. "If we hadn't found him?"

"I think you wouldn't have rested until you found her." Carol pauses. "But it certainly made it easier."

"Not on you," Daryl grunts. "Still got all busted up by that car."

"Well. Maybe that I could have done without." The smile on her face fades. 

"M'sorry," Daryl says, stepping further into the brush. "Bout Tyreese."

Carol just nods. "He was a good guy," she says softly. "He - " She stops talking, shakes her head. "I think he would have been happiest if he'd been able to stay in that cottage, with Judith and - the girls -" She never says Lizzie and Mika's names anymore. She never speaks of them at all, except the once in Atlanta to Daryl. Maybe she'd talked to Tyreese, but he was gone. "He was happy there. Until it go ruined. I wish -" She shakes her head, shrugs. "He was a good man."

"Yeah," Daryl nods. He scans the ground looking for signs he knows he won't see. 

"Hey," she says, and he looks at her. "We're not dead."

He hears the words like they used to mean something. 

"It's okay to - let yourself feel something."

"I feel," Daryl says defensively. He's not a robot or a monster, he feels plenty, he - 

"No, I mean - I know you, Daryl. You think it's on you, to save people. You think if you're not there and something happens, or if you can't find us food or water, you think that's all on you, you blame yourself -"

"Stop," he says quickly. Because she doesn't understand. He could have saved Noah and Tyreese. If he'd been there, in the house with them, Ty wouldn't have gotten caught with his back turned and Daryl could have put down the walker before Noah lost his head and got killed. He could find water, or food, if he was looking right. That he hasn't is his fault. There are things all around them, living things. If Daryl understood where they got what they needed, he'd be able to save all of them. 

But he can't. He can't save anyone. He never could. And they're going to die out there from dehydration, from -

No. No. Stop. 

"You have to take care of yourself," Carol says softly. She brushes the hair out of his eyes. "It's hard to lose two people like that, in one swoop, and one of them just a kid -"

His age, Daryl thinks. Noah was only a couple months older than him. 

"It's hard and you have to let yourself feel it and understand that feeling bad doesn't mean you did something bad. It's not your fault. You weren't there. You couldn't do anything. None of us could. It's on all of us who stayed behind. It's not your weight to carry."

Daryl stays quiet and Carol pushes a kiss onto his forehead. Her lips feel dry and chapped. 

"We're not dead," she says again. "We have enough burdens, Daryl. Don't go taking on ones we don't need to carry."

Daryl looks up at the sun. "We should get back," he says. 

They go back in silence and Daryl turns over what she said in his head.

* * *

He gets back in time to dig his fingers into a walker's eyeholes and stop it from biting Rick. 

Everyone is slashing and stabbing and wasting energy they don't have, working up a sweat they can't replenish. When it's over everyone is breathing heavy and pissed and tired, so tired. For a minute he thinks Sasha is going to stab Michonne after Michonne tells her off, but she just walks away, breathing heavy.   
  
"Think that did anything?" Daryl hears Abraham whisper to Rosita.   
  
"Nope."  
  
They keep walking.   
  
Carl is in the back of the pack. He's got some box in his hands and he keeps turning it over, messing with it. He jumps when Daryl comes up next to him.   
  
"Jeeze, a little warning next time -"  
  
"Naw," Daryl says. He looks at the box. "Wha's that?"  
  
"I - I think it's a music box," Carl says. He opens it up and shows Daryl the tiny mirror, the little ballerina. "I got it for Judy."  
  
"She ain't got no jewelry," Daryl points out.   
  
"Shut up. I know that. I just thought - like a mobile, right?"  
  
Daryl isn't sure he knows what a mobile is. 

"Thought she could like watch it spin and listen to the music. But it's busted." Carl gets quiet. "I was thinking - do you think I should give it to Sasha?"  
  
Daryl squints. "Ain't like she's got jewelry either -"  
  
"No, you dick, because -" Carl looks back down at the box. "Because - if it weren't for Tyreese, Judith would be - we'd never have found her again." He notices Carl almost never says anything that could possibly connect Judith and death in the same sentence. "He took care of her. And he didn't have to. He saved her like - " Carl swallows and looks back at the box. "Like, maybe Sasha would - maybe it'd mean something to her, to. To know that I'll - we won't forget him." Carl looks at Daryl and Daryl remembers the day at the church. _I'm trying to act the way he thinks I should. To be the person he thinks I am._ "Do you think that's a good idea?"  
  
Daryl shrugs and gnaws on a finger. "I - maybe," he says. He honestly doesn't know. But he guesses its something. "Better get it workin' first."  
  
Carl scowls at him and looks back at the box. 

* * *

Daryl chews at his fingernail as they walk - something about chewing makes him generate more spit and he swallows it eagerly. He's chewing it when they find the cars.   
  
For a second Daryl doesn't care that the cars are small because there's a lot of them and if one of them has gas, if they can drive down the road to the next town and find real water, then it'd be worth it to load up like a clown car because - 

But they're dusty and dead, abandoned who knows how long. Daryl tries to swallow his disappointment.   
  
"Gonna go out," he says to Rick, shouldering his bow. "Head into the woods, circle back. See what I can find."  
  
"Want company?" Carol asks, and Daryl shakes his head.   
  
"Naw," he says. "Just me."  
  
He doesn't know why he goes. Maybe he just doesn't want to see everyone's faces when the cars don't turn up anything. Maybe he wants to think about what Carol said. There's something in there he can't fasten his mind around, and he's not sure he wants to. Because if it's not his fault - if he couldn't have stopped it from happening, if he couldn't find them food and water not because he was looking wrong but because there was none to find, if the reason he didn't find Sophia wasn't because he'd gone about the thing all wrong - 

Then it means there's no control over any of it and the idea makes his stomach feel like it's spiraling out of control.

He founds the desiccated remains of the deer, the delicate line of its spine exposed to the world. What a waste.

If his plan was to leave so he didn't have to see the disappointment, he has to see it double when he returns and shakes his head that he didn't find anything.   
  
Abraham pulls out booze, the only thing they found, and Daryl tenses. Abraham's been drunk a lot since whatever happened on the road with Eugene. He's never done anything to Daryl, hardly even spoken to him. And it's not like booze makes everyone into a monster. There are plenty of monsters without it, living and dead. But there's some muscle memory that kicks in when he sees it and he finds himself tracking, anytime Abraham pulls some out, how much the level has gone down.   
  
It doesn't help that apart from his ginger hair and his dumb mustache, he looks a little like Merle and a lot like Will Dixon.   
  
Daryl knows that booze will just dry him out more but still, it's hard to watch him drink, watch his throat work as he swallows, hear the slosh of the liquid knocking against the glass. Daryl closes his eyes. 

"I truly do not know if things can get worse," Eugene says, which Daryl could have told him was the stupidest fucking thing to think, let alone say. 

Because then the wild dogs come.

They look like they probably were mean dogs even when they belonged to people, but now they belong just to themselves and these people are in their way. They're probably just as hungry and thirsty as they are. Daryl cusses in his head as he goes for his knife - if he'd seen one of them in the woods he could have tracked it. The dog would have been better at finding water than them. But maybe not - the dogs look matted and hungry and like they aren't used to people anymore, so it must have taken a lot to get them to try for this big of a group.   
  
Sasha takes them all out and they fall with a whimper that makes them pets again instead of predators. 

He's eaten worse than dog, but the charred meat doesn't do much for his thirst. They eat it rare, barely waiting for it to be cooked before scarfing it down. The juices slide down his throat but they are almost salty from being burned and it's not enough. 

The preacher burns his collar and Daryl doesn't care. 

They keep walking. 

* * *

He and Carl try to fix the music box at the back and Sasha walks at the front like she's waiting for something else to kill. 

Maggie and Beth are walking in front of them and Daryl keeps his ears as closed as he can. He can see from the tense set of Beth's shoulders, the unhappy slump of Maggie's, that they're talking about Grady, and Daryl knows it's none of their fucking business so he just keeps messing with the tiny mechanism, the cogs and springs, the ribbon of perforated metal that's meant to make the noise. 

Abraham offers Sasha a drink and Daryl looks on with dread until she refuses.   
  
"You know it'll just make things worse."  
  
"The way you're going," Abraham says, taking a swig, "you're what's going to make things worse."

Glenn tries to shove a water bottle into Daryl's hand and he shakes his head.   
  
"Carol send you?"  
  
"I sent me. Drink."  
  
"Give it to Maggie or Beth. Or Judith."  
  
"They've had theirs. Now have yours. Hey." Glenn makes eye contact. "We can make it together. But we can only make it together."

Daryl grunts. "Give it to the asskicker," he says. "I'll find my own." And he disappears off into the woods.   
  
But he doesn't find it. He can't find it. Why is this happening? The trees are lush and green, the plants are healthy enough. Where's the water gone?   
  
The preacher last night talked about Jonah. Daryl didn't know much about that shit but he wondered if letting Tyreese - maybe the last fully good man among them - die had brought on some higher displeasure.   
  
He scoffed. Bullshit. It's all bullshit. 

He finds a barn and looks for signs of habitation - water troughs, ponds, any sign of animals living there. Nothing. 

There's just nothing.

* * *

  
In the end, it's not Abraham or Sasha or the booze that makes things worse. 

It's that fucking note. And the water waiting for them in the middle of the road.   
  
Daryl's had enough of friends. He's got room for family or enemies. There's no space for anything less. He thinks about Joe leaving a note like this and shivers.   
  
Joe wouldn't. Not like this. But someone different could. And nobody gives something for nothing these days.   
  
Especially not something like this.   
  
The feeling of being watched is almost overpowering as everyone gets their weapons set and tries to look - not casual, but not scared, which probably they all are. 

Eugene tries to drink and Abraham slaps it out of his hand and Daryl finds himself flinching back. Eugene is stupid and Abraham is drunk and everyone's temper is at the very edge, this can't end well - 

But the thunder comes before a riot can break out and for a moment Daryl is so grateful he doesn't know what to do. 

Everyone is soaked to the skin immediately, mouths open towards the heavens - Daryl has just enough foresight to open the top of his empty water bottle and leave it open to catch something as he tilts his head back as far as it goes, feels his hair get plastered to his forehead, his neck. It's like a miracle. It's a sign. 

Or maybe it's just more of their fucking luck because the sky goes black too quickly and the thunder is loud and the lightning is close, too close.   
  
"There's a barn!" Daryl yells and when they get there the rain is getting worse by the second, but everyone still waits as Rick and Daryl and Glenn and Maggie and Abraham check it.  
  
It reminds him for a moment of Hershel's barn - quiet, the musty smell of hay, the stalls meant for animals. There aren't any animals, though. just a walker. One. Speckled with cobwebs.   
  
"She had a gun," Sasha says, low, as the rest of the group steps in from the rain. "Coulda shot herself."  
  
"Some people can't give up," Carol says. Daryl feels her eyes land on him. "Like us."  
  


* * *

Carl curls up with Judith and is out immediately. Judith fusses a moment, and Daryl scoops her up from Carl's arms.  
  
"Hey there, Kicker," he says, low, gruff. "Been a while, huh?" He tickles her stomach, gives her a bounce. "You tire big bro out?"  
  
Beth sits next to him. "Share," she says quietly, and Daryl hands the baby over without complaint. Beth buries her nose in Judith's fine hair, inhales.   
  
"How come babies always smell good?" Beth asks, arms curled around Judith, who settles back against Beth without complaint and shuts her eyes.   
  
"They don't," Daryl says bluntly, having changed enough of Judith's diapers to know.   
  
"They're going to be okay," he hears Carol saying to the adults huddled around the fire. "They bounce back. More than any of us do." He wonders what it is they're meant to be bouncing back from. Beth's time at Grady? His with Joe? The way Carl's dad ripped out a guys throat with his teeth and then they all almost got eaten? Losing Tyreese and Noah and making a three week trip for no purpose? Or does she just mean the days without water, does she just mean normally, physically, young people recover faster?  
  
"I used to feel sorry for kids that have to grow up now," Rick says. Daryl feels himself bristle, and Beth rolls her eyes at him as she runs her hands over Judith's hair. Daryl isn't a kid anymore. He's still not convinced he was one when all this started. Beth's got to be almost nineteen. "But I think I got it wrong. Growing up is getting used to the world. This is easier for them."  
  
Daryl thinks about that. If growing up is getting used to the world, then he and Beth were grown before all this started. Beth was used to a home with beautiful things, with enough food, with people who loved her. With no alcohol and horses. And Daryl was used to ugliness, violence, things going to shit for no reason, for something to try and hurt you lurking in any corner. Maybe Carl wasn't used to things, maybe Judith had never had a chance to. But it's different for them.   
  
Just because Daryl didn't have to adjust to ugliness didn't mean he wanted it. 

"This isn't the world," Michonne says fiercely. "This isn't it."  
  
"It might be," Glenn says. He's looking at Sasha, staring out into the rain, alone. "It might."  
  
"That's giving up," Michonne says, and Daryl actually agrees. The world is like this, sure, but if they just accept it's like this then they'll die. If they just accept there's no water instead of going out and looking for some, if they accept a walker's coming towards them and let it bite them, if they accept these things then they're done. These things are real, they're the way the world is, but they don't have to take that as their final answer. 

"It's a reality," Glenn says, and Rick interrupts like the argument doesn't mean anything.   
  
"Until we see otherwise, this is what we have to live with." 

The lightning shines through the slats in the wood of the barn. Daryl looks at what he has - at Beth, the firelight illuminating her white blonde hair, her chin perched on the top of Judith's head as she listens. At Carl, snoring up a storm beside them, his angular teenaged face looking surprisingly babylike in the dim glow of the barn. Sasha, staring at the rain. Abraham, drinking, Rosita and Tara watching him. The fucking preacher with his bible, mumbling in the corner. Glenn next to Maggie, Maggie who is looking at Beth like she doesn't know what to do. Beth doesn't look back. Rick, his face intent, earnest.   
  
Carol, her hair drying in curls, assuring the others that they'll bounce back.  
  
This is what he has to live with. And sure a lot about it is fucked up. But a lot of it isn't.   
  
He'll live with this any day.

"When I was a kid -" Rick started, "I asked my grandpa once if he ever killed any Germans in the war." Daryl thinks about his brother. Wonders if Merle had ever killed anyone in the army. If he would have wanted to. "He wouldn't answer. He said that was grown-up stuff, so - " He wonders why, if Rick had gotten the brush off as a kid like that, he was so quick to brush off the younger members of the group sometimes. Did he not remember what it felt like? Did he forget what he was capable of at that age? "So I asked if the Germans ever tried to kill him. But he got real quiet. He said he was dead the minute he stepped into enemy territory. Every day he woke up and told himself, "Rest in peace. Now get up and go to war."" The phrase sends a shiver down his spine. Rest in peace. You can't die if you're already dead.   
  
But even that's not true anymore. The dead can die. Everything can die.   
  
The tricky part is figuring out how to live.  
  
"And then after a few years of pretending he was dead, he made it out alive. That's the trick of it, I think. We do what we need to do and then we get to live. But no matter what we find in DC, I know we'll be okay. Because this is how we survive. We tell ourselves... that we are the walking dead."  
  
Daryl's speaking before he realizes he is, before he remembers that he's eavesdropping - although is it his fault that the other talk so fucking loud and assume the rain will cover it up?   
  
"We ain't them," Daryl says loudly, and they all look at him. At Beth, holding Judith. At slumbering, oblivious Carl.   
  
"Daryl's right," Beth says. The lightning flashes again and he can see the raised outline of the scars on her face. "We're not them."  
  
Rick looks at them appeasingly. "Yeah," he says. "We're not them."  
  
"We ain't," Daryl says again, and his voice sounds angry and he's not sure why. Judith, on Beth's lap, fusses a little at Daryl's tone. Beth shushes her softly, rubs her back. Daryl gets up, slings his bow over his shoulder.   
  
"Daryl," Rick says, but Daryl just spits on the dirt floor of the barn. 

"We do what we need to do," Daryl says, looking at them. At Beth. At himself. "But we gotta live all the time. Not just someday after everythin's done because if after don't come, 'm not goin' out a'ready spending my time pretendin' to be gone. I ain't."  
  
Carol is looking at him with something like pride in her eyes. Rick's look is harder to read. He feels Glenn and Maggie looking at him too and it makes him uncomfortable - in a flash, the same kind of creeping discomfort he hated at the prison when the Woodbury people first arrived, back at the Atlanta camp, in school his whole life. He grabs his bow. "I'll take watch," he mumbles, and he gets out of there as fast as he can. Goes for the chained doors.   
  
He can still feel everyone watching him which is probably a good thing, because when the doors creak open too far and he sees what's coming at them, the others are quick to respond. 

He guesses being looked at has it's uses.

Not that he doesn't still hate it.

* * *

The night is long and the storm keeps raging. They push against the door, one huge mass, feet slipping as the dirt of the floor turns to mud, hands groping and gripping for some kind of handhold, something. Daryl feels splinters working their way into his hands but there's nothing to do except push, push, push with the people beside him. Sometimes he can't tell anymore if its the walkers or the wind hammering against them but it doesn't matter. The response is the same. Hold the line. Push. Push. Push. 

The storm stops at maybe four or five in the morning and it's deadly quiet. The door is still and silent. They rope the chain tighter and Daryl takes guard as everyone else falls asleep. Or maybe passes out is a better turn. They're like rags wrung out, nothing left in them. Daryl's arms feel like overcooked pasta and his hands sting but he just sits there, eyes on the door, and feels the sting in his hands and the rough wood against the back of his shirt and he messes around with the dumb music box Carl found until Maggie slides next to him on the floor.   
  
"Hey," she says quietly. "You should get some sleep."  
  
He shrugs.   
  
"I want to -" She looks around. Beth, her head pillowed on a jacket, is asleep not far off. Maggie's voice lowers even more. "I know I - I gave up. No," she says, holding up a hand as Daryl opens his mouth to refute her, "I'm talking." But after she says that, she goes quiet. She looks at Sasha.   
  
"I could have been there," she says even quieter. "If you hadn't -"  
  
"I din't do nothin'," he says. "Carol drove and Noah tol' us where she was, I din't -"  
  
"You never talked about her like she was dead," Maggie says firmly. "You - you sounded like her, when you talked about her. Like you'd never give up hope."  
  
Daryl doesn't even know what hope is anymore. But if it's knowing that someone is tough as nails and you can count on them to fight as hard as they can for as long as they can, maybe Daryl did keep hope.   
  
"I was so - I thought if we looked for her, we'd find her, and I wouldn't -" Maggie's throat works and Daryl wonders what she's thinking of. Beth stumbling around outside Grady, shambling with vacant eyes and snarling teeth? A tiny grave? A mangled, half chewed corpse, a butchered torso. "I was afraid of what we'd find. But you weren't."  
  
He had been. He'd just never been scared of Beth.   
  
"I - I failed her," Maggie says. "I know it's going to take time, to - but we have that time, now. We can work on it. I can. I -" She shakes her head. "Thank you. That's all. Thanks for time."  
  
"Din't give you nothin' y'didn't have," Daryl says uncomfortably. Maggie smiles at him.   
  
"You're a tough nut, Daryl Dixon."  
  
"Naw," he says. "That's Beth." He looks at Sasha. "And Tyreese," he adds.   
  
"Yeah," Maggie says. "And Tyreese."   
  
He shoves the music box into her hand. "Carl wanted to - give this to Sasha," he says. "I been - I think I fixed it. You think she'd - like it?"  
  
Maggie looks at it bemused. "What is it?"  
  
"He found it for the Kicker," he explains. "But he thought - maybe Sasha would want it to know - you know. That Carl ain't gonna forget what Tyreese did. Or whatever."  
  
Maggie's face softens. "I think - that's sweet, Daryl. But maybe Carl should - wait a little. To make sure she'd - receive it right."  
  
Daryl nods. "Yeah." He flips open the top and nothing happens. "Shit," he says. "Guess it ain't fixed yet after all."  
  
"I have faith in you," Maggie says. And she gets up. Brushes off her knees. "Get some sleep. We're all right now."  
  
And maybe, Daryl thinks drowsily, they are.

* * *

It's not until later, when he wakes up, when Maggie comes in with a fucking stranger in a windbreaker that he realizes it's never as simple as that.


	8. The Distance

Daryl hasn't seen a stranger in three weeks and something about this guy standing among them electrifies him.   
  
He's behind Maggie and Sasha and peering out the door before he knows what's happening, his bow up. He can feel his breathing changing, the adrenaline. Where there's one, there's more, especially for a guy like this - clean and well equipped and with a face that looks fed. And where there's more - 

There's Terminus. There's Joe and Len and Tony and Harley. There's people like the cops at Grady, people who want things, people who get what they want.   
  
Daryl's not letting this guy get them. 

He looks like the kind of guy that made Will Dixon spit - city people who spent their weekends tromping around the woods in techy gear and thought that made them the world's greatest outdoorsman, hunters who did it for sport and didn't even eat their kills, people who thought the woods can be owned. Daryl's eyes scour the woods, linger on the trees, the ground where mangled walkers lay under broken tree limbs. The threat is out there, somewhere, but he can't see it and it makes him antsy, makes him twitch. 

"Daryl," Rick says, and he leaves the door and pats the guy down. He knows what Rick means. Rick means Sasha's on the brink and Maggie's hoping for something better but Rick doesn't hope anymore. He just makes shit happen.  
  
"We did that," Sasha says when Daryl doesn't find anything. He steps back and the guy grins at him. Winks. Which makes Daryl spit. 

"Hi," the guy says. The little asskicker starts crying, which Daryl thinks says enough. "It's nice to meet you."  
  
Rick looks at the guys weapon and he squints and Daryl wonders what he's looking at. What he sees. Because Daryl can't see anything but trouble.   
  
"He has a camp nearby," Sasha says. "He wants us to audition for membership."  
  
"I wish there were another word," the guy says, smiling. "Audition makes it sound like we're some kind of a dance troupe. That's only on Friday nights!"  
  
The fuck?  
  
"It's not a camp. It's a community." Daryl doesn't get the difference. "I think you all would make valuable additions, but. It's not my call. My job is to convince you all to follow me back home."  
  
When he says that his hackles go up even further and he can see some of the others too - Glenn, Maggie. Rick. He remembers Terminus, the public face, the welcome wagon - then the rooms of hanging bodies, the train cars of people, the basin of blood.

Their job had been to be convincing too. 

"I know," he says, but he doesn't know shit. "If I were you, I wouldn't go either. Not until I knew exactly what I was getting into. Sasha, can you hand Rick my pack?"  
  
He knows their names, Daryl thinks, skin crawling. Did Sasha and Maggie tell him or had he already known, had he been watching, listening, and Daryl hadn't seen him - 

"I apologize for the picture quality. We just found an old camera store last -"  
  
"Nobody gives a shit," Daryl grunts from behind him. His bow in his hand.   
  
The man looks at him, a little startled. Why? Because he's young? Because he doesn't want to hear crap about fucking old camera stores when this guy has been stalking them -

"You're absolutely 100% right," the guy says, and somehow it makes Daryl hate him more. Like Daryl's some stupid fucking kid who needs to be placated, some scared baby who this dude wants to comfort - 

He's babbling some tourist shit about walls, safety, cold rolled steel. "Nothing will matter if you don't know you're safe. If you join us, you will be." The guy's a liar too, because no one can promise that anymore. There's no such thing as absolute safety. So the guy is either a liar or an idiot. 

Daryl's relieved when Rick knocks him out. 

* * *

Carl is dumping out the guys bag, sifting through its contents. "Everyone else, we need eyes in every direction. They're coming for us." The words make Daryl's stomach tighten. "We might not know how or when, but they are."

But when they look out, there's nothing to see but fallen trees and silence.

Carl's laying out the stuff from the guys pack neatly - Daryl snorts a little when he sees the guy is one of those campers, carting a whole roll of toilet paper around with him at the end of the world. Carl seems concerned about the orange gun.   
  
Daryl's more worried about the applesauce, because that means he knows about Judith, which means he knows their softest spot.

"You have a flare gun," Rick says when they guy wakes up, still talking all peace and understanding. "You have it to signal your people. How many of them are there?"  
  
They only have the ammo in their guns and what limited amount rattles around in the bottom of the duffle from the Claimers. It's it's a prolonged assault, a siege, they'll - the numbers the guy is saying behind him, eight, thirty two, four hundred and forty four, hit him in the back like rocks.

"How about a guy who leaves bottles of water for you in the road?"  
  
Fuck. He's been on them a while. And Daryl didn't notice anything, didn't see shit, stupid -

"How long you people been followin' us?" Daryl snarls, fingers gripped the bow, but he's not sure if he's angrier at the guy or himself. Didn't see a fucking thing -

The answer is, long enough to think he knows something. Daryl thinks about Rick ripping out Joe's throat with his teeth, thinks about the questions they'd used to ask people back at the prison. How many walkers have you killed? How many people? Why?  
  
Daryl couldn't answer those questions anymore if he wanted to and he doesn't want to. 

"You're survivors, and you're people."  
  
This guy doesn't know shit. 

"How many others are out there?"

"One."  
  
He's either a liar or so fucking stupid or maybe both, a stupid ass liar.

Daryl watches Rick watch the guy and he doesn't know what's going to happen next. It feels like a huge split forming under his feet - either they go with this guy, get driven to some unknown location, or they don't, in which case they'll probably have to kill this guy and anyone who came with him. He's not sure which way Rick will go.   
  
He's not sure which way he wants Rick to go, and that scares him.

"Passing up someplace we can live? Where Judith can live? That's pretty dangerous," Michonne says fiercely. Daryl thinks about the night before. The idea of just being the walking dead or living, like the two were mutually exclusive.   
  
He doesn't know what's dangerous and what isn't and that scares him too.

In the end, it's not Rick who chooses.   
  
It's Michonne.

* * *

They split up and hide themselves while they wait for the longest sixty minutes of Daryl's life. 

He sits with Carl, Carl is his sheriff's hat with his knife out, stabbing into the dirt.   
  
"Ain't no way to treat a knife," Daryl mumbles, and Carl stops and wipes the blade on the side of his pants.   
  
"You think it's real? The place?"  
  
"I think he thinks it's real," Daryl says slowly. They're crouched behind a tree and Daryl's attention is split between the door to the barn and the edge of the clearing the others disappeared into.   
  
"But we thought that too," Carl finishes. "At the prison. And we were wrong."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
They wait another long, quiet minute.  
  
"If it was - you think -" Carl swallows. "You think we could make it turn out differently? This time?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. He's not sure there's a different ending anymore. Maybe there isn't. But maybe there's a difference in time. They'd had ten months at the prison. What if they could make it for twenty? Two years? Four? How much time was worth the risk?   
  
Daryl doesn't know. But he lets himself wonder for a second about what it would be like for the little asskicker to be able to sit on her own somewhere, to be able to walk. She's already starting to crawl sometimes, but any time she starts, anytime she gets too far, someone scoops her up and holds her close. Because it's not safe.   
  
What if the place lasted long enough for Judith to learn to walk? Would that be worth the risk?

It's math he doesn't know the answers to and Daryl sucks at math.   
  
He just hopes Rick and Michonne are better at it.

* * *

The RV appears in their midst like a ghost. He half expects to see Dale driving in his stupid bucket hat, Andrea clambering onto the top with a gun to keep watch.   
  
The cans too are like something from a different life. He hasn't seen so much in one place since the prison.   
  
"Why wouldn't we go?" Carl asks suddenly, and Daryl looks at him. The other boy is staring at the food, at Judith. He's doing the math, Daryl realizes, and he's decided it comes out right. 

"We need this," Michonne is saying, and Daryl realizes she's not talking about the cans or the walls. 

Michonne chooses and there's a moment, a terrible one, where Daryl wonders if this is it, if this is where the group splinters.  
  
"I'unno, man," Daryl mumbles, staring at the cans. "This barn smells like horse shit."  
  
"Yeah," Rick says. "We're going."  
  
They're going. But they're going their own way.

* * *

Daryl feels uncomfortably full when they set out. There's enough cans for each of them to eat a whole one and he tries to pace himself, but he eats too fast and he almost feels sicker for having eaten than he felt when he was starving. 

Or maybe that's the nerves. Driving into the unknown.   
  
They take 23 and it's crawling with walkers and they lose sight of the travel car and isn't that the way it fucking always goes.   
  
"They'll circle back around," Maggie says. 

That's when they see the flare.   
  
"Fuck," Abraham says, and he throws the RV in drive. 

"How'd they get over there?" Tara asks, squinting. 

"Does it matter?"  
  
"That guy had a flare - what if his people do too?" Rosita is asking as Abraham drives off, towards the water tower.  
  
"Does it matter?" Maggie says again. "It might be our people. It's a risk we have to take."  
  
The ride is tense with silence. The ammo is low but everyone is double checking, loading up. Beth has Judith strapped to her chest and is checking her knife.  
  
"Y'stay in here with her til it's clear," Daryl says.  
  
"Of course," Beth says like he's stupid.   
  
He guesses it was sort of a stupid thing to say.   
  
"I'll stay with them," the preacher says. Daryl thinks that's an even stupider thing to say. Like the preacher could do anything if there was trouble.

When they get there, it's not their people.   
  
It's some guy, stuck under a car, surrounded by walkers.   
  
When he sees the RV his face breaks out in relief. "Aaron!" he yells, and he starts shoving at the car with his spindly arms. "Where's -"  
  
"Shit," Maggie says. "We gotta get that offa him."  
  
They walkers are almost too busy with their prey to notice them. Daryl and Tara pick them off.   
  
"Thank you," the guy gasps, his face pale with pain as Abraham lifts the bottom of the car with a grunt and Maggie and Rosita drag the guy out. "I - where's Aaron?" The relief is gone and he looks more scared now, not seeing Aaron, then he did surrounded by walkers. "Did he - did you -"  
  
"He's with my husband and some of the others," Maggie says briskly. "We got separated. They'll be here soon."  
  
She sounds more confident than Daryl feels.   
  
"We can - inside," the man gasps. His ankle pokes out at a weird angle as he tries to stand. "Ah!"  
  
"Can you get him?" Maggie asks Rosita, who hefts the guy up like he's nothing. "Daryl, Carol, Abraham, with me. We'll clear this place."  
  
They duck into the warehouse, scout every room. He can hear the guy talking to Rosita.   
  
"Ow, ow, I - sorry, you must think - I promise we're normally more capable than this, but Aaron was gone so long, I thought -"  
  
"Yeah," Rosita says.   
  
"I'm Eric."  
  
"Rosita."  
  
"Pleasure."   
  
"Okay, it's clear," Maggie says, holstering her gun. "Bring him in here. We're gonna have to splint that ankle."  
  
The guy looks alarmed. "Oh no, it's all right, I can wait for the infirma - ouch!"  
  
"Yeah," Maggie says. "Siddown already."   
  
She splints it with a briskness and competency that makes Daryl think, in a sharp burst, of Hershel.   
  
"It's broken," she says as she finishes. "But not bad."  
  
"I've never broken a bone before."  
  
Daryl squints at the guy. He too is kitted up like some weekend explorer - he even has a stupid bandana knotted around his neck. He sees Daryl looking and he grimaces.   
  
"I know," he says conspiratorially. "Never broken a bone! At my age! What have I been doing with my life?"  
  
Daryl doesn't even know how to address that question.

Under it all is a gnawing fear along the edges of his too full stomach - they've been split up again. How does this keep happening? Why haven't they figured out how to stop it? He parks near the door, bow out, both ears open, listening for a car, a whistle, the tromp of boots.   
  
Carol comes, sits next to him. "They'll come towards the flare too," she says softly. "They'll find us. Don't worry."  
  
"Ain't," he says, chewing at his thumbnail.   
  
But when he hears the whistle in the street outside, he whistles back harder than he ever has in his life and he spills out into the street with barely a moment of caution.

* * *

They're all back together - even Eric and Aaron.   
  
Aaron disappears into the back room where they set Eric up and Rick follows him. Daryl sits back down in the dark of the main room, leans against a shelf. Closes his eyes.   
  
"Tired?" Carol sits down next to him. He just nods.   
  
"Jus' - ready to stop travelin', I guess."  
  
She looks at him seriously. "Are you?"  
  
He shrugs. Messes with his sheathed knife. "Dunno," he finally answers. "Are you?"  
  
"I don't know." It's quiet in the other room. "We'll be okay, Daryl."  
  
"Yeah," he says, looking at her. "I know."  
  
She smiles at him and smooths his hair. "Yeah. I know you know."   
  
Rick and Aaron come back and they find out where Alexandria is and it seems like it might all be over.   
  
"We can hit the road tomorrow morning," Aaron says.   
  
"That sounds fine," Rick says. "But if we're staying here for the night, you're sleeping over there."  
  
"You really think we gotta do that?" Maggie asks, something soft around her eyes. But Aaron responds more harshly.   
  
"The only way you're gonna stop me from being with him right now is by shooting me," Aaron says, and it's the first time in all of this that Daryl's heard him sound mad. He stiffens, looks at Rick - Rick won't like that, even though he might respect it - and then looks at Aaron. There's something in his words, in the passion in them, that makes Daryl uneasy.   
  
But he'd sound like that if they tried to split him up from Beth. Or Carol. Or Rick. 

But it gets smoothed over. 

And the next day, they leave for Alexandria.

* * *

He gets the same double vision the next day as they pile into the RV. There's Dale in the front seat alongside Abraham. Andrea cleaning her gun in the corner, Shane next to her, showing her have over her shoulder. T-Dog slumped on the couch, snoring with his head banging on the window in between Carol and Sasha. Jacqui tending Jim in the back, Eric and Aaron in the spaces between them.  
  
At the table, Eugene, Tara, Carl, and Beth, playing cards. Next to them, Sophia, her hands full of Uno cards, grinning delightedly.   
  
"You want in?" Carl asks. Daryl slides down.   
  
"All right. Seven-card stud. Stares and squares." Anytime Eugene talks, Daryl has to remind himself it is actually English he's speaking. "It's aces, cuatros, neeners, and two-eyed jacks."

"So there's - fourteen wild cards?" Tara asks. "Are you serious?"  
  
"Serious as two copulatin' dogs."

"What's a neener?" Beth asks. 

The RV takes a turn and out the window, the Washington Monument peaks over the horizon, somehow pristinely white in the sunlight. Daryl's gotten used to seeing a layer of grime on everything. But there's no grime on that. At least, not from this distance.  
  
Even the RV breaking down feels like a memory. 

He goes up onto the roof to stand watch. Andrea next to him.   
  
"It's good you found them," she says. Her sister is next to her - Daryl doesn't even remember her name but she's there, smiling over Andrea's shoulder, a silver necklace around her neck sparkling in the sun. "No one can make it alone now."  
  
Where they're going, wherever it is, they can make it. Because they aren't alone.   
  
He isn't.

* * *

Glenn fixes the RV and is met with cheers, scattered applause - like they aren't even scared they'll brings walkers down on them. Rick disappears into the woods for a moment and Daryl bites his nail. Rick isn't sure of Alexandria. But Rick's sure of them. And he's sure of Rick. He'll be back.   
  
And he is. And he drives them right up to the gate. 

They sit in the RV for a minute, frozen. Aaron pokes his head out of the back bedroom.   
  
"We're here," he says. He ducks back in and Daryl can hear him shaking Eric. "Eric, wake up, we're home."  
  
Home.   
  
Daryl's not sure if they're home yet. But it's a start. It's a possibility.   
  
It's something. Daryl will take it.   
  
And when it goes bad? They'll move on. Find somewhere else.   
  
He hears Carol in front of him, talking to Rick.   
  
"Hey. Even if you were wrong? You were still right."  
  
And she's right. He looks at the walls. At what they could hide.   
  
And he knows that if this isn't the place, then they'll get out quick. They will.   
  
They always do.

But he sticks close to Carol and keeps his hand on his bow as the gates creak open.   
  
Just in case.


	9. Remember (Part 1)

It's pure reflex. When the trashcans rustle, Daryl fires off a shot automatically. He's pretty glad too - it's a possum, looking pretty full, and he got it straight through the middle. Not bad for just instinct.   
  
He's less glad when he looks up and Aaron and the stranger at the gate are staring at him. 

He hates it when people look at him like that. Hates it. And the way these people are looking is something he thought was done. It's rich people looking at him and thinking, redneck. Thinking, trash. It's people who've never had to fight for anything looking at him like the dirt under his fingernails and the ragged edges of his jeans and thinking, too rough, bad kid. He thought there weren't any rich people left anymore.   
  
He was wrong.  
  
"Brought dinner," he bites out, because fuck these people. Fuck their clean stupid jackets and their hiking boots and the startled look on their faces. Fuck them. 

It's not the way he wanted to start Alexandria and it doesn't get better from there.

He's not sure what he was expecting. He knew Aaron had said it wasn't a camp, but somehow he'd been picturing something like the prison. Something fortified, strong. He hadn't looked at the stupid pictures because pictures could be anywhere, of anything. 

Daryl doesn't know what he was expecting but it wasn't fucking mansions and picket fences and mailboxes at the end of every driveway. Wasn't garages for every fucking house and flower beds and solar panels.   
  
It wasn't any of those things and when the gate closes behind him his shoulders tense and he grips the possum tail even tighter in his hand.   
  
They're stuck there, now. 

"Before we take this any further, I need you all to turn over your weapons," the rich fuck running the gate says. No fucking way. Nobody moves. The guy frowns. "Stay, you hand them over."

"We don't know if we want to stay," Rick says, gun in one hand, baby in the other. Which you'd think would be enough for the people. Rick wasn't going to cradle his infant daughter in the middle of a gunfight, was he?

Let's leave, Daryl thinks wildly. Let's just go, now, before this gets any further. This place isn't for people like him.   
  
But they're stuck. And Daryl isn't going to let himself get stuck without weapons. He's not.  
  
"It's okay, Nicholas," Aaron says, and Daryl spits. Nicholas. Fucker. "Let them talk to Deanna first."  
  
"Who's Deanna?" Abraham yells from the back.  
  
"She's knows everything you want to know about this place." Aaron turns to Rick. "Rick? Why don't you start?"  
  
What does he mean, start? They're gonna separate them? He looks at Carol, at Beth, at the others. No way. No fucking way. 

But they do.

* * *

Rick goes first. And when he comes out, they hand over their guns. 

They don't say anything about bows or swords and he notices that he and Michonne don't volunteer them, and everyone keeps their knives on their belts.

The cart fills up quick and Carol goes last. He watches her struggle under the strap of the gun, like it's too heavy for her, like she doesn't know how to use it. Like she's weak.   
  
It makes the nerves in his stomach tighten and he bites at the inside of his cheek as Rick gives her a long look.   
  
Rick and Carl and Judith go off first. They finish first with talking. Watching them go makes Daryl anxious. They're splitting them up, they're getting them apart, they took their weapons and they're helpless and now - 

But no one else seems scared so Daryl frowns and swallows it down. It don't matter. Guns aren't what makes them dangerous. 

They sure help, though. 

To his surprise, Daryl is next. Maybe because now that Rick's gone she wants to interview him quick, audition him fast, so he can get rejected and booted out before Rick comes back.   
  
He looks at Carol uneasily. She smiles at him, but it's not her normal smile - it's a little simpering, a little saccharine.   
  
"See you when you get out!" she says brightly. It's not comforting.   
  
"Uh - do you want me to -" Maggie asks, gesturing at the possum in his hand. He clutches it.   
  
"Naw," he says. "M'good."  
  
And he goes in.

He didn't know houses like this existed. Sure he'd been inside some places that were big like this, but they were knocked over already, everything useful scattered and broken, blood on the walls. They were ruined. This place isn't. It's perfect.   
  
He hates it. 

"Hi, Daryl," the lady says. "I'm Deanna."  
  
She looks like a fucking school principal or something. Vice principal, he edits. Yeah. Like she's the one in charge of keeping things in order.   
  
He can feel her looking at his sweaty hair, his dirty arms, the dirt and blood under his fingernails. The bow on his back. The animal in his hand.   
  
"Would you like to sit?"  
  
Fucking liar. She doesn't want him to sit. Whatever he touches she won't ever be able to get clean again.   
  
He just grunts. There's a dish on the table of stones - jasper, jade, turquoise. He digs through them, partially because he's interested, but mostly just to fuck with her. She wants him to touch her stuff? Fine. He'll touch it. 

"I'm going to film this. All right?"   
  
His head shoots up. "Why?"  
  
"For a record."

The camera feels worse than any eyes. He grunts. "S'your place. You do what you want."  
  
He hears a beep and focuses on the stones in his hand. Smooth, cool. Heavy. Too clean to have been found by hand. Someone bought these and put them in a bowl like decoration.   
  
"You're welcome to sit, Daryl. I won't bite."   
  
Yeah. Right.   
  
"S'a'right," he mumbles. He drops the stones. Looks around the room. It's really like nothing he's seen. There's more books than Carol would know what to do with. The lights are on. There's a TV. He wonders if they watch it, if they put in movies and make popcorn and forget about the world.   
  
The cabin could fit in this room.   
  
"Do you want to be here, Daryl?"  
  
Why does she keep saying his name like that? It makes him feel small and grubby, like he's in trouble. He scowls. Here it comes. Do you want to be here, Daryl? Because too bad. We don't want you here. Get out.   
  
He wonders if the others would leave with him if he got kicked out. Carol, probably. But the others?   
  
They've been on the road a long time. They deserve walls.   
  
"The baby," he mumbles. "Carl. They deserve a roof, I guess."  
  
"What about you?"   
  
Daryl shrugs. "Don't need one."  
  
"But do you deserve one?"   
  
He wishes he were outside so he could spit. Fuck her. She doesn't know what he deserves.   
  
"The others too, been out a long time. Deserve walls."  
  
"We have those." 

Daryl nods.   
  
"How old are you, Daryl?"  
  
He shrugs. "Dunno. Probably eighteen by now."

He's not sure if he's seventeen yet but he also knows he's not going to give her an excuse to treat him like a kid.   
  
"How long have you been with Rick?"  
  
"Since the beginning. Almost." It's weird to remember that most of his time at the quarry, he was there without Rick.   
  
"What happened to your parents?"  
  
"Died," he says baldly.   
  
"I'm sorry to hear that."  
  
"Yeah. Whatever." He looks at the books on her shelf. The possum is swinging in his hand and he wants to put it down but he doesn't know where.   
  
"Did you - lose them on the road? Or -"  
  
"Mom died when I was a kid. Fire." He doesn't mention his dad. He won't unless she asks outright.

He says nothing about Merle. He's none of her business.

"And your father?"  
  
"Got bit."  
  
"That must have been frightening. To lose your father, to be alone in the world."  
  
He scowls. "Weren't alone. Was with Carol an' Rick an' them."  
  
"They looked after you?"  
  
"Din't need nobody lookin' after me. Look after myself."   
  
Deanna looks at him with cool eyes and he hates her.   
  
"Still. You're lucky you landed with them. They're good people."  
  
"Yeah," he says guardedly. What's he meant to say? They are good. Is he meant to try and sell them on her? Explain why they'd be good for Alexandria?  
  
"I'm sure you've been very helpful to Rick as well. You seem very capable."  
  
She sounds so condescendingly, like she doesn't think trash like Daryl could ever help anybody. He scowls.   
  
"Guess so."  
  
"Well. If you want to be here, Daryl -"  
  
He tenses. This is it. If you want to be here, you better play by our rules. If you can't -   
  
"Then we're happy to have you."   
  
He blinks.   
  
"Send Carol in next, will you?" Deanna is messing with the camera settings. He doesn't hesitate. Makes his way for the door.   
  
"Daryl?" He looks back. Deanna is looking up at him, smiling. "Welcome to Alexandria."

* * *

He sends Carol in next. He could go to the house, he guesses, go find Rick, but he'll wait for Carol.   
  
He scales around the side of the house looking for windows with white curtains. He saw when he was inside, one of them was open, just a bit. Probably for a breeze.   
  
He finds it and settles in underneath it to listen just when Deanna starts talking.   
  
"Do you mind if I film you?"  
  
"Oh, well, I don't know what I could say that'd be worth recording, but if you want to, sure!"  
  
He bites at his nail. He doesn't know what Carol's doing or why but it makes him feel anxious, the tone in her voice, the brightness. It's a mask he's never seen her wear. Not even at the quarry.   
  
"How'd you end up with this group? Have you been there from the beginning, or -"  
  
"Oh, yes. Well, my husband and I -" he tenses. She never talks about Ed, and never in this horrible fake voice. "We tried to get to Atlanta but we didn't make it before the bombing, so. We ended up at the camp near the quarry and then I guess it's history! Rick's taken good care of me. Of all of us, but - not that - I mean, after my husband died I don't know what I would have done if Rick hadn't been there."  
  
He remembers Carol slamming the pick axe into Ed's brain herself. Carol's face by the campfire, after they left the farm. When she said they should go, that Rick couldn't do it. Rick making her leave.   
  
"It's quite a journey you've all been on."  
  
"It really has been!"  
  
"What did you do? Before."

She hadn't asked Daryl this question. Maybe because he was a kid and she figured he was just a student before, that he didn't know anything, didn't have any skills. Didn't have a life worth knowing before any of this happened.   
  
Maybe she figured she knew all about his life so why bother even asking?   
  
"Oh, well. I did laundry, gardened, um...always had dinner on the table for Ed when he came home." Daryl bites at his thumb. Yeah. He bets she did. "I miss that stupid, wonderful man every day."  
  
He wonders how Carol can say it with a straight face, how it doesn't make her want to punch something. Hearing her say it like that, like that's who she is, makes him want to punch something. He bites harder at his thumb instead, feels it sting.   
  
She doesn't mention Sophia, even though it'd probably fit in with the story she's telling. Picked my daughter up from school, helped with homework, made cookies. Just your average stay at home mom and housewife.   
  
But she doesn't bring her up and Daryl is glad. To hear her talk about Sophia in that fake voice would make him puke.   
  
"I really didn't have much to offer this group, so I think I just became sort of their den mother? And -"  
  
"I'm sure they've appreciated that," Deanna says. "Especially Daryl?"  
  
"I'm sorry?"  
  
Daryl stills. Do they know he's here, under the window? Is it a trick, to get him to come out?  
  
"Just - I'm sure Daryl appreciated that. Losing his own mother, then his father. I'm sure having you around to look after him made things easier."  
  
"Well. We all looked out for him. He's a sweet boy."  
  
"He mentioned you and Rick by name, though. That means something."  
  
Does it? Had he? Stupid. He hadn't noticed himself saying anything special, stupid, words fucking him up again, what else did he tell her that he didn't mean to say -   
  
"Well, we were both lucky, I guess. Daryl and I. To find Rick, and the others. A housewife and an orphaned kid, alone in all of this, I doubt we'd have made it very far. But Rick, the others - they've been nice enough to protect us."  
  
"Hm." Deanna says. There's a pause.   
  
"Where do you think you'll fit in? 

"Oh. Um. Hm!" They're noises he's never heard her make. Who is this person, in that room? Why does Carol have to be her? "Well - I'd like to be involved in the community! Do you have anything like a Junior League? I'm a real people person."  
  
"Well. I'm sure we'll find you something," Deanna says. He can hear the dismissal in her voice. It makes him mad. Like Carol isn't worth paying attention to. Which he guesses is Carol's point, but still. Fuck her. "Send Glenn in next, would you?"  
  
"Of course! So nice to get the chance to chat."  
  
"Likewise."  
  
Daryl has to sprint to get back around front before Carol comes out. Glenn looks at him strangely.   
  
"Where were you?"  
  
"Takin' a piss," he pants as Carol comes towards him.   
  
"Pretty sure they have bathrooms here -"  
  
"I bet they do!" Carol says in that fake chipper voice. "I'm going to go find myself a shower, doesn't that just sound heavenly? Daryl? Should we go find our new home?"  
  
"A'right," he mumbles, and the two of them walk off.   
  
He darts a look at her from under his bangs. She's beaming at everything, every tree, every passerby.   
  
"Why you -" he mutters, but she just shakes her head.   
  
"Later, pookie."   
  
He feels the eyes on him from everywhere, every house, on his greasy hair and his dirty arms and the possum he's swinging by the tail and he scowls until they find their way in.   
  
"M'gon' clean this," he says quickly. He doesn't want to go in the house. Doesn't want to have to see the way they're going to have to live now, like dolls in an enormous dollhouse, in a mansion big enough to be a museum. He holds up the possum. Carol nods, but frowns.   
  
"Maybe inside. You don't want to make the wrong impression."  
  
"Naw," he says. "Ain't - I'll do it out here."   
  
He plops down on the porch and pulls his knife. He wonders if she heard what he almost said.   
  
I ain't ready.   
  
She smiles at him. "Okay, pookie." She leans down and kisses his forehead. He wonders who that's for - for him, or for the eyes looking at them from every window. 

* * *

Rick comes out with a haircut and clean shaven and Daryl feels sick.   
  
It's like stepping back in time - even at the prison Rick had worn a short beard. But he looks years younger, lighter, and he looks like the kind of person who would live in a house like this. Daryl never will, even if they cut his hair and shove him in new clothes, he'll always look like trash.   
  
He'll never be able to live here. But he'll have to. As long as the rest of them do.   
  
He'll have to.   
  
Carl bounds off next door to investigate and Carol follows him.   
  
"C'mon," Rick says, and his voice sounds normal and something inside Daryl relaxes. "Let's check the perimeter."  
  
He's on his feet, bow on his back, before he can blink, leaving a neatly skinned possum and a neat pile of entrails on the porch behind him.   
  
"How was your talk?" Rick says as they pace the outside of the house. "With Deanna?"  
  
Daryl scoffs. Rick smiles. "Yeah, thought you'd say that."  
  
"She ain't - don' think she likes me," he mumbles.   
  
"Her loss," Rick says. His voice is teasing but Daryl can hear the seriousness that runs under it. "Look - they're going to underestimate you here. Because you're a kid."  
  
"Told her I was eighteen."  
  
Rick looks at him and nods. "All right. Fine. We can back that. But even at eighteen - you, Carl. Beth and Carol, even. You're our backup, all right? If something goes wrong here - you're going to be the ones who they won't expect anything of. So - try not to make them suspect you."  
  
Daryl nods. "S'nice we're on the fence," he ventures as they pass it. "Be good, if we gotta - you know."  
  
"Yeah. I know." Rick claps a hand on his shoulder. He doesn't touch Daryl as much as Carol does so it startles him. He looks up into Rick's strangely unfamiliar face.   
  
"You kept us alive out there," Rick says softly. "I won't forget that. None of us will."  
  
Daryl just nods. Rick squeezes his shoulder, once, and they keep going.   
  
They meet up with Carol in the alley between the two houses. It's not that big - Daryl squints up, wonders if they could run a ladder in between the houses, figures they probably could. But the houses are huge. Even finding someone in the same house might be tricky in an emergency.  
  
"They're right next to each other, but -" Carol says and her voice is normal and her eyes are pragmatic and Daryl feels something in him untwist. She's still there. The real Carol is still there.   
  
"They took our weapons and now they're splitting us up," Rick says. 

"Yeah," Daryl says, relieved that Rick is thinking it too. That they aren't all just rolling over to this new place.   
  
"Yeah," Rick says. "We're all staying in the same house tonight."  
  
Thank fuck.

* * *

"C'mere," Carl hisses when he gets back from the other house. He grabs Daryl's arm and pulls him inside before Daryl can even protest.   
  
The inside is all high white ceilings and carpeting so thick he can't hear himself step and weird art that doesn't make sense. But they don't stop downstairs. Carl pulls him all the way upstairs and into one of the bedrooms. He closes the door behind him.   
  
"What?" Daryl grumbles. But he feels himself start to tense. Carl saw something, something bad, but if he'd seen something really bad he'd have told Rick, so what - 

"Someone's been hanging out in the house next door."  
  
"Who? Doin' what? They spyin' on us?"  
  
"No, no, it's - just kids probably, it's like teenager stuff, like they probably just use it to hang out -"  
  
Daryl stares at him. "So? The fuck d'you care -"  
  
"No, no, they - so they left stuff in one of the rooms, in the storage room, like comics and -"  
  
"Yeah?" Daryl doesn't mind a comic. He's not crazy about them like Carl is but they're all right. Better than a book, anyway, even though Carol at the prison used to shove stuff into his hands and get him to read it when there's a dull moment.   
  
"Yeah, but - listen, stop interrupting!! I found this -"  
  
And Carl is holding out a porn mag and Daryl feels his whole stomach flip flop.   
  
"So what?" he makes himself say. It's not the first porn he's seen - Merle was a connoisseur and his dad had a pretty decent collection himself. His fourteenth birthday, the last one before all the shit hit the fan, Merle had even sent him some magazines from his army base. He'd blushed beet red and shoved them under his mattress. They were probably still there. 

But he'd never - had someone like Carl shoving it at him, someone he wasn't related to, and not since that moment in Atlanta when he thought maybe he might be - 

No. Stop it. He's not a faggot. He's not.  
  
"So - it's porn!"  
  
"Yeah, I got eyes," Daryl mumbles, and he takes the magazine from Carl. It's dogeared and clearly well loved. Daryl looks at the pictures. It's just women, women contorting and posing in ways that look unnatural and uncomfortable. It makes Daryl feel uncomfortable to look at them. He shoves it back at Carl. "So?"  
  
"I just - I thought you'd -" Carl looks confused. "It's - it's porn."  
  
"Yeah, y'said."  
  
"I'm - I thought we could, um. Whatever. Share it, or something."  
  
Carl's face is now bright red. Daryl feels his own face going bright red. "Man, keep it."  
  
"No! No, I meant - I mean it's porn, I haven't seen anything like this since -"  
  
Ever, Daryl bets, but he gets what Carl means. "Yeah, right," he says. Yeah. Because normal teenage boys would be salivating over some fresh jacking material. "S'cool though. You keep it."  
  
"I - okay. If you're - sure." Carl is shoving the magazine in between his waistband and his shirt, like it is top secret documents. "If you ever want to borrow it, let me -"  
  
"Got it," Daryl says, and he opens the bedroom door and makes his escape. 

* * *

He wonders when or where Carl intends to make use of his new discovery as they all settle in for the night in a big pile in the living room.   
  
Deanna stops by and looks startled to see them all in the one room.   
  
"Staying together?" she says, and she smiles at them. "Smart."  
  
They know it's smart, that's why they're doing it. They don't need her condescending bullshit - 

"No one said we couldn't," Rick says.   
  
"You said you're a family. That's what you said." Daryl looks at everyone and wonders when family became a word that meant something. "Absolutely amazing to me how people with completely different backgrounds and nothing in common can become that. Don't you think?"  
  
She's look at Daryl. Daryl in his ripped pants and battered boots and his shirt with the sleeves ripped off, dirty because everyone else actually wants to use the shower so he'll let them go first. She's looking at Daryl and then looking at Sasha, at Glenn, like she knows he's the piece that doesn't fit. It's his background that's the problem, and he doesn't know how she knows but she does, she must, and it makes him furious and sick at the same time. He looks down at Judith, gurgling in her cradle, and he wonders if she'll see him like that someday. Like the piece that doesn't fit, the racist redneck hick, the white trash. That makes him feel worse.   
  
He hadn't felt like that in a long time. Like he didn't fit. He doesn't like the feeling.   
  
"Everyone said you gave them jobs," Rick says, and Daryl's head snaps back to Deanna.   
  
"Yeah. Part of this place. Looks like the communists won after all!" She laughs but Daryl doesn't get the joke.   
  
"Well, you didn't give me one," Rick says.   
  
"I have," Deanna replies with a conspiratorial smile. "I just haven't told you yet."  
  
What a stupid answer. What a stupid way to do things. Stupid.  
  
"Same with Michonne. I'm closing in on something for Sasha."  
  
"What 'bout me?" Daryl blurts out. Then he regrets it.   
  
Deanna smiles at him kindly. "We don't give jobs to the kids. You've got school of course -" Fuck no. Fuck. No. "And you're expected to help with chores, with anything that needs a hand. But otherwise, we figure you all need some time to relax too." She looks over at Carl, reading a comic at the table. "Sound good to you, Carl?"  
  
Carl looks at Rick. At Daryl. Then back at Deanna. "Um. I mean. I guess."  
  
"Good."  
  
"I ain't a kid," Daryl says. He's trying to keep his voice even, to stay calm, like Rick would do, but it's hard. "I -"  
  
"Why don't we just give you some time to get settled," Deanna says. "See where you might fit."  
  
"It'll be nice to relax," Rick says with a straight face. "Right, Daryl?"  
  
Daryl's about to lose it but he remembers what Rick said. Our backup. Don't make them suspect you.   
  
"I - yeah. I guess." He frowns at the crib. "Just ain't used to it."  
  
Deanna smiles softly at him. "Well. Get used to it." She looks at everyone. "Good night."  
  
A ragged chorus of good nights and silence. Daryl doesn't do anything. 

"You look good," she says to Rick. And she's gone.


	10. Remember (part 2)

Everyone starts bunking down in the living room. Daryl likes that they're sleeping in the same room. There are rooms upstairs, more rooms in a house than Daryl's seen, but they share the downstairs together and that's right. The house is warm enough and there's enough blankets that he doesn't have to curl right up into somebody, but he can still see where everyone is, hear them breathe. It's like a slumber party, something Daryl has never participated in, but he'd heard about them. He stays in his spot near the window - unrolls his bedroll underneath it. If he looks up right, he can see the stars. Plus, Judith's crib blocks him off from the rest of the people so no one can sleep to close, and Beth is the next closest person.

He dreams that night but his dreams evaporate like smoke in his hands and he wakes up in the middle of the night sweating. It's something in the creak of the house, of the rooms around them, empty but waiting. He listens for a moment. He can tell people apart by the sounds they make, even when sleeping - Abraham with a guttural snore like a chainsaw, Rosita repeatedly thumping him in the chest to get him to shut up. Tara whose breathing is almost unhearable, just tiny gusts of air.   
  
He turns over and looks underneath Judith's crib. Beth, on the other side, is curled up in a ball, her forehead creased. Maybe she's dreaming too. 

He hears a noise from a different room and his whole body tenses. That's what woke him. There's someone there, in the house, someone real, they're trying something, he has to wake Rick, he has to - 

But Rick isn't there, when Daryl looks over, his blankets are all rumpled but he's gone. Then, just when Daryl is about to sound the fucking red alert, Rick reappears from the hallway.   
  
Stupid. He was probably taking a piss or something and Daryl was about to - stupid. Fucking stupid. 

It takes him a long time to fall back asleep and he doesn't know why. 

* * *

The next morning everyone streams out of the house like they're at fucking Disney World or something, bright eyed and busy tailed. Daryl isn't either of those things. He feels surly and uncomfortable, even though he's had way worse nights of sleep. The smell of breakfast cooking makes him sick - it's not even anything particularly special or exotic, it's eggs or something. But the smell of it makes his stomach clench, the way the pots and pans bang together, the laughter in the kitchen, is something that feels alien and strange, the soundtrack to a TV show that doesn't exist anymore. So Daryl goes out onto the porch, pushes himself into the corner, down low so no one can look at him from the street. He presses his head on his knees and he closes his eyes and he tries to figure out what the fuck is so bad about this place, what is it that makes him feel like he's going to crawl out of his skin. When the door bangs open he jumps. It's like everyone decided walls meant they didn't have to be quiet anymore so they'll slam anything they want and relish the noise. Daryl's always been quiet. Even at the cabin, with his dad. It was better not to make noise. Not to draw attention.

"They said explore," Rick says, and Daryl jumps again. What's wrong with him? Rick's eyes are searching when they look at him. "Let's explore."  
  
"Naw," Daryl says, arms on his knees. "I'll stay." Everyone took their knives with them, that's good, but he bets he'll get looks if he wanders around with the crossbow and fuck if he's leaving it behind and wandering around unarmed. Even with the knife, it's not enough.   
  
"All right," Rick says quietly. He is staring at the neighborhood from the porch. For a minute Daryl thinks he knows exactly what Rick's doing - scanning for threats, perimeter check, like they'd done yesterday - or maybe just judging the people he sees - who the fuck needs to put their dog on a leash in the fucking apocalypse? But he's wrong. 

"Lori and me," Rick says softly. "We used to drive through neighborhoods like this. Thinking, one day..."  
  
Right. Because this is the life everyone else wanted. Daryl's the only one who doesn't get the appeal.   
  
"Well. Here we are." He tries not to sound bitter when he says it. From the look Rick gives him, he's not sure he succeeds.   
  
"We'll be back," Rick says. And he disappears off the porch.   
  
There's nothing to do but listen to the sounds of Alexandria - the hum of insects, someone laughing somewhere, some kids racing each other up and down the block. It makes him feel tighter and tighter, like his bowstring being pulled too taut, so he decides to work on his bow instead. Do real maintenance, a real cleaning. It's better outside than inside but outside is bad too - he tries to use the stupid porch as a shield but it's all slatted wood so it ain't like it's good for hiding. When he hears people go by, he tenses. He's wondering if he should go to the backyard instead when Rick comes back.

It wasn't very long at all and Daryl feels the tension melt away some - Rick's uneasy too, Rick's cautious, Rick's going to - but he comes over to Daryl and says "Jessie's invited you and Carl over now."  
  
"The fuck's Jessie?"  
  
Rick gives him a slight frown. "She's the woman who cut my hair yesterday."  
  
"I - I don't need a haircut." Is this Rick's way of saying he looks like a faggot? Carol'd said something about a haircut too but then she'd apologized, she said she hadn't meant it like that. But does Rick mean it like that, does Rick think - 

"It's not for a haircut," Rick says, laughing. "It's to meet her sons."  
  
Daryl squints. "Why?"  
  
"They're around your age. Well, one of them is. The other might be younger, I don't know."  
  
Daryl doesn't say why again but it must be written all over his face because Rick squats down in front of him.   
  
"Because it's what people here do."  
  
"Right." Right. Of course it is.   
  
"Just give it a shot," Rick says. "Carl's going too. He asked if you were coming."  
  
For a second Daryl wants to say no, almost does say no, but Rick adds "He said he wouldn't go without you."  
  
That's enough to get Daryl down the street, where Carl is waiting for him.   
  
"S'get this over with," Daryl says.

And in they walk.

* * *

Ron is waiting for them downstairs when they arrive. "Hey," he says immediately. "We're all in my room, c'mon." He starts for the stairs looking perfectly at ease. The woman who must be Jessie is in the kitchen and a younger boy is sitting at the granite countertop, munching on something. He drops whatever it is in the bowl and starts to follow them, but Ron turns around. "Thirteen and up, midget," he says, and the younger boy visibly deflates.   
  
"But I - "  
  
"Mom! Tell Sam we don't want to hang out with -"  
  
"Don't finish that sentence," Jessie says warningly. She smiles at the younger boy. "C'mon, sweetheart. Let's give them a little time."  
  
"I'm up here," Ron says. "My place is the nicest. I mean, Enid's staying with Olivia, which is fine but Olivia is like, kinda a lot, and my dad is like always at the infirmary so -"  
  
He walks with such ease, so clearly at home, that Daryl wonders if Ron lived here before the shit went down. The hall is carpeted and it gives everything a weirdly muffled sound. Daryl feels like his shoes must be leaving huge muddy tracks everywhere, but he looks back and there's nothing.   
  
"We're almost always here after school, so you can come by any time."  
  
"Can't believe you guys have school," Carl says. It's the first thing Carl has said since they arrived.   
  
"I mean. School. It's in a garage. Little kids go in the morning and then it's us in the afternoon. Probably you guys, too, right?"  
  
"Yeah," Carl says. "Probably." He sounds as unenthused as Daryl. Daryl thinks about the quarry - Carl and Sophia and the Morales kids at the picnic table, scattered flashcards, workbooks. Our Glorious State.

But then they're in the room and nobody told Daryl he and Carl would be outnumbered.  
  
"Guys, this is Carl and Daryl. Carl, this is Mikey and Enid."  
  
Mikey is up and walking towards them the second his name is said and it takes everything Daryl has not to shove him back, teach him to mind his space. He's wearing a kind of sweater Daryl wouldn't be caught dead in and that he assumed no one would wear voluntarily. Enid is on the bed. She gives them one cool look, then looks back at her comic.   
  
Yeah. That's better. 

"Hey!" Mikey says, like an overenthusiastic puppy.  
  
"Hi," Enid says, like she knows it'd just bring her more attention if she didn't say anything. 

"Enid's from outside too," Ron says, and Daryl wonders why Ron talks about Enid like she can't hear him. "She just came eight months ago." Ron has a proprietary hand on her shoulder, a type of movement that makes Daryl want to snarl. But Enid doesn't do anything, so maybe that's one of the things that Daryl's weird about.   
  
"Oh - um -" 

Carl is digging around his pocket and for a second Daryl thinks he's going to pull out the porno that he found and his heart almost stops. But it's just one of the comics. He holds it out like an idiot. Daryl hadn't even gotten a chance to look at that yet. But it's like Carl is trying to make them like him, make them think he's a stand up guy, the kind of kid that wouldn't keep even a comic that didn't belong to him. Maybe Carl is trying to make them think that. Maybe Carl is trying to make himself believe it.   
  
"Is this - yours?" He holds it out towards Mikey and Ron, but Daryl sees what Enid's reading and wonders if either of them will take it.   
  
Ron scoffs a little. Daryl bets it was his porno. Mikey looks like he'd have turned bright red at the very implication that he might seen a porn mag. Ron just looks sort of sheepish but mostly proud. Like he doesn't give a shit that someone's been through his stuff.   
  
"Sorry. We didn't know you guys got that house."  
  
"We mostly just hang out there and listen to music. That's Enid's," Mikey adds.

Enid snatches the comic and throws it to the side with barely a glance. Yeah. Daryl's okay with Enid. Maybe. 

"You guys want to - play some video games? Or Mikey's house has a pool table, but his dad's kind of strict about it." Daryl darts a glance at Mikey - he doesn't want to go anywhere he might cross somebody's strict old man, but Mikey just seems relaxed, almost rolling his eyes about it.   
  
"It's okay. He's at work."

The other boys are staring at them expectantly and Daryl feels Carl stiffen beside him. His eyes meet Daryl's and he looks like he has no idea what the response is. Daryl doesn't know either, but Daryl never knew. He'd never really been over to somebody's house before like this - the cabin was too far out for casual dropping by other people's places, and people tended not to invite you if you didn't invite them. And now way was Daryl ever inviting them. The idea of trekking across the town to some other house to shoot pool and potentially get in trouble sounds literally like a nightmare to Daryl, but what if that's the right answer? Daryl never knew this stuff, but Carl probably had. Carl had probably had tons of playdates at other people's houses, tons of kids at his. He probably used to be the kid laying out the options, showing people around, bringing them to his room. But now Carl is at a loss too, and the two of them just stand there, silent.

"Um... Sorry, I guess we come on kind of strong," Ron says. He's looking at the two of them with a huge amount of pity on his face and Daryl feels his fingers itch. "We can just hang out." 

"You don't even have to talk if you don't wanna!" Mikey adds. Mikey's a fucking dweeb.

"Yeah, took Enid three weeks to say something," Ron says, hooking a thumb towards Enid. Again with the talking about her like she's not there. It makes Daryl want to punch Ron even more.  
  
"Pull it together, sport," Enid says. She's looking at her comic again and Daryl wonders who she's talking to - Carl with his indecision, or Daryl with his hands slowly closing into fists.  
  
"Let's, um-- let's play some video games," Carl says. He looks at Daryl. "Right?"  
  
"Yeah, man," Daryl grunts. "Right."

"Cool, yeah - "  
  
Carl finds himself sitting between Mikey and Ron. He shoots a desperate look over his shoulder towards Daryl, which is the only thing stopping him from going to the bathroom and sneaking out through the window. Instead, he leans against the wall near the door.   
  
"You ever played Grand Theft Auto? I've got San Andreas and Grand Theft IV -"  
  
Daryl can't follow the video game talk. Carl seems to.  
  
"Nah. My mom - she didn't like, um. Violent games." Carl looks at the cases, then shoves out a hand. "I can figure it out."  
  
"Not much to figure out," Mikey says. "Mostly just do what you want and try not to die."  
  
Yeah. Easy. 

The boys are quickly immersed in the game - Ron and Mikey yelling advice at Carl, who seems not to really care how he's doing but is trying to do what the others say. It's weird to watch Carl with other teenagers. He realizes simultaneously how young the boy is - Ron is taller than him by a head - and how much older he seems than the others. He's clearly humoring them by trying to play. Daryl wonders if they can tell or if they just assume the Carl they see is the Carl they get.   
  
He wonders what they assume about Daryl. 

Enid rarely looks up from her comic. Every so often she looks at Daryl, then looks back at her book. Daryl's glad. He doesn't need to talk to anyone. He just needs to get through this and get home.   
  
"Your brother want a turn?" Mikey asks, and Carl looks at Daryl. Holds up the controller.   
  
"Man, they're not brothers," Ron hisses, and he turns to Daryl with a fake sympathetic look on his face. "Deanna told my mom. About your parents. We're sorry."  
  
Mikey looks like he's about to throw himself out the window. "Ohmygosh, yeah, I'm - I didn't mean - I'm really really sorry, I didn't -"  
  
"Man, whatever," Daryl says. He hates that Deanna is telling people his shit - his private shit - but there's something in his stomach about the way Carl didn't even try and refute it. He didn't care enough. He doesn't know what it means but it's something. "I'm good."  
  
Mikey turns back towards the TV, his neck poking out of the stupid sweater turning bright red, and Ron turns back too. He can't get a read on Ron. He slides around but there's something weaselly about what he says, how he acts. Like he's performing. But for who? For Carl? For Daryl? For Enid, who he seems to feel he has some claim to? To pathetic lap dog Mikey? Who knows.   
  
They keep stealing cars and shooting shit and Daryl just leans against the door jamb and waits.   
  
"Here."   
  
Enid has thrown a comic at him. He catches it with instinct. It's one he's never seen before, with characters he's never met.   
  
"I don't have the first one," she says, "So good luck." And then she's back in her comic.   
  
Daryl reads his until he hears the door downstairs slam. Carl's head whips around which is strangely satisfying to Daryl. Good. He shouldn't let his guard down, he shouldn't stop listening. 

"Oh," Ron says. He's still staring at the TV, but his shoulders are set deliberately casual and he takes the controller from Carl and starts to play for him. "It's probably just my dad."  
  
There's very quiet footsteps coming up the stairs and Daryl hates the sounds. The cabin had carpet too, shitty stained carpet, and sometimes he'd be asleep and the carpet would muffle his dad's footsteps until it was too late, until he was practically on top of him - 

"Knock knock." A man pokes his head in. He's wearing a collared shirt that he's unbuttoning. "Hey there, Mike. Enid."  
  
"Hi Mr. Anderson!" Mikey chirps. Enid doesn't say anything.   
  
"And if it isn't the new arrivals. I'm Pete. Town doctor." He holds out a hand to Daryl, who is still hovering at the door. Daryl doesn't know what to do so he takes it. The grip is firm, almost too firm, and the man is looking him up and down.

"That's, uh, Daryl and this is Carl," Ron says from the floor. He's paused the game and he's looking at his dad. "We were just playing Grand Theft Auto -"  
  
"Fun," Pete says. He's studying the two boys and Daryl feels his jaw tighten. Wonders if Pete can notice. Hopes he can't. "Well, I'm starving. Ron, you mind helping your mom set the table for dinner?"  
  
"Why can't Sam? He's already down there - "  
  
"He is," Pete says firmly. "And I'm ask you to help as well."  
  
A long moment and Ron puts down the controller. "Yeah. Sure."  
  
"Probably time everyone heads home for supper anyway. Nice to meet you, Carl. Daryl. Sure I'll be seeing you two soon enough."  
  
"We ain't sick," Daryl says. Pete looks at him.  
  
"Well. I'm sure. But we tend to give everyone who comes in from outside a check up. Just a once over. There's a lot you can pick up on the road. Right, Enid?"  
  
Enid shrugs. She's packing up her comics into her backpack.   
  
"So. Sure I'll be meeting the whole gang soon."  
  
No fucking way Daryl is letting this guy take one look at him. No fucking way.   
  
"Ron? Why don't you walk your friends to the door."  
  
"Yeah, right." Ron gets up. Turns off the TV. Daryl marvels for a moment at the sight of the screen going black. There is something in the moment the picture disappeared, where it seemed like the whole world getting sucked away into the center of the screen, that seems like magic. But then Ron is holding the door for all of them and Pete is disappearing down the hall, into what is probably the master bedroom. The door shuts behind him with a definitive click. 

Jessie is doling out something onto four plates, and the younger kid is nowhere to be seen.   
  
"Hi guys. Did you have fun?"  
  
"Thanks for having us," Carl says, and for a moment Daryl can imagine Lori over his shoulder, poking him in the side, reminding him what to say.  
  
"Of course. Any time."  
  
Mikey leads the way out of the house. Enid brings up the rear. Ron opens the door.   
  
"Uh. See you in school, I guess," Carl says, and Ron nods.   
  
"Yeah. See you in school."  
  
And that door clicks shut too.   
  
Mikey goes to a bike that lays abandoned at the side of the driveway - imagine leaving your bike unlocked and dumped on the ground and it still being there when you got back - and he gives them a wave over his shoulder.   
  
"Bye, Daryl! Bye, Carl!" And then he's gone too.   
  
Enid doesn't say goodbye. She just vanishes.   
  
And Carl and he make their way home.   
  
"What do you think?" Carl says. Daryl shrugs.   
  
"Come on. I saw you watching them the whole time. You think something."  
  
"Dunno. Just - they're kids."  
  
Carl scowls. "They're older than me, they're not -"  
  
"Naw, I meant - I dunno. They're - you ain't a kid. Like that. Even if you're younger -" Daryl shrugs. "They're fuckin' kids, man."  
  
"Yeah." They walk a moment in silence. "Not Enid though."  
  
"Naw. Maybe not her."  
  
"Mikey though -"  
  
"Man, Judith's older'n Mikey." Daryl puts on the bootlicker voice and clasps his hands under his chin. "Oh Ron, please can I have a turn playing the dumb ass game, please, I promise I'll try and shoot everyone I see and not miss -"  
  
He's rewarded with a laugh from Carl and a shove. "Whatever, he was fine. He's just -"  
  
"Din't say he wadn't fine." Although Daryl wonders what use there possibly could be to Mikey. "Jus' sayin' -"  
  
"He's a kid," Carl finishes. The laughter is gone and he looks thoughtful. "Right."  
  
"Right."  
  
"And we're not."  
  
"Naw," Daryl said, as they mounted the porch steps. "We ain't."

* * *

That night passes much the same - Daryl takes his dinner into the backyard and eats there. He's not alone - Tara is next to him, chowing down, and Abraham is smoking a cigarette with a very satisfied look on his face. Beth is feeding Judith inside with a fucking high chair, which Judith seems to hate - the little asskicker is kicking at it and wiggling around, like she feels penned in, trapped.   
  
Yeah, Daryl thinks, watching as she puts up a fuss and Beth tries to feed her mushed up peas. I know the feeling.

He sleeps in fits and starts, waking anytime there's a creak, any whistle of wind from outside, the sound of shifting weight near him. They aren't all in the living room, but they are all in the same house still. Eugene claimed the bathtub and is curled up in there with a pillow. Carl snagged a bed. 

Daryl's sitting on the porch the next morning when Carol leaves for her new job. 

For a minute, he doesn't know it's her, and that scares him. She's in a fucking cardigan and khaki pants - her whole outfit looks like it'd be ruined the second he touched it. She had to fight a walker in that, she'd be covered in blood immediately and it wouldn't wash out. Pristine, he thinks. She looks pristine, cleaner than anything he's ever seen. He looks down at his hands, his bitten nails, the dirt ground so far in he doesn't know if it'll ever come out.   
  
He better not touch her when she's like this. Not that he touched her that much anyway, but - 

"Time to punch the clock and make the casseroles," she says cheerily, and it's like she's speaking a foreign language. This isn't Carol.

"What?" he asks. Like she'll snap out of it, she'll see it's him, that she doesn't have to -

"The job Deanna gave me. Make dinner for the older people-- moms who need a break, people who can't cook. Get to meet a lot of the neighbors that way."

Daryl just scoffs, concentrates on his bow. Right. Because Carol's the people person.   
  
"Have you taken a shower yet?"  
  
Daryl grunts in assent. He had - not a long one, just a rinse off, but people kept knocking on the door and wanting the toilet, wanting to shower, wanting to brush their fucking teeth, and he was getting nervous someone would just walk in eventually and he wasn't doing that, so he'd finished before he had a chance to soap up.   
  
"Take a shower," Carol says and for a second she sounds like the normal Carol. If only she sounded like it over someone else. He feels grimy then, disgusting, like he reeks and he's gross and he's sure it's true. They all think he's garbage, he probably smells like garbage, and Carol - "I'm going to wash those clothes. We need to keep up appearances. Even you."  
  
What does that mean, even him? And what kind of fucking appearance is she keeping up?   
  
"Ain't startin' now," he says. Because he can't do what Carol's doing. Even if they scrub him down and put him in brand new clothes, cut his hair, give him a fucking manicure or some shit to work on his hands, he'll never be able to fit in. It'll take more than a cardigan and a set of pearl earrings to make him look like he belongs here. He'll be betrayed every time he opens his mouth, every time he forgets to use a napkin and wipes his mouth on his arm, when he gets bored and plays the knife game with his jack knife, stabbing between his finger and trying not to slip. Good hardworking people will always know Daryl's not one of them, no matter how many showers he takes. It's better, Daryl thinks, not to even try.  
  
"Don't make me hose you down in your sleep!" Her tone is teasing but her eyes aren't and Daryl remembers the time Merle slid a hose through his window over his bed, turned it on, spraying everywhere, the look on his dad's face - 

"Y'look ridiculous," he mutters, but it's low and quiet and if Carol hears him she doesn't respond. She just walks away.

He doesn't take a shower though. The house still isn't empty - Glenn and Tara are going out on a run and Rick is prowling the town every second, looking for cracks in the foundation. He's meant to go to school soon but he's sure as hell not going to go today. It's only their second day, for crying out loud. They can't take a little fucking break? Beth and Judith are inside, which Daryl wouldn't mind, but Eugene is there too - Eugene who will talk your goddamn ear off if you let him, Abraham and Rosita are somewhere, Maggie's off trying to figure out the system of rationing. The house isn't full but it's full enough and he doesn't want to shower anyway. That's not Carol. That's some kind of robot, some incredibly lifelike simulacra, and if it isn't Carol, then he doesn't have to listen to any of the shit she says anyway.   
  
He goes for a walk instead. He sticks near the wall, so he's near backyards, weird flower gardens, bits of scrub with construction materials stacked nearby. He can see the trees over the wall, can hear the wind going through the leaves, the distant chitter of animals - squirrels, probably, they had squirrels in Virgina. He wishes he were there, on the outside. Considers scaling the fence but figures someone - probably that bitch Deanna - would come along and then he'd get it. So he doesn't. He just sets out to discover where there is to hide in this place, where it's possible to be alone. 

It's a very small list of places and that's what he's looking for when he sees Glenn. 

He's with the tool from the gate and some other, different tool. They're yelling about some shit - about how Glenn isn't ready to be on runs which is fucking laughable, Glenn who has run singlehanded into Atlanta and run out again - and then one of the guys puts his hand on Glenn and it's not funny anymore. Daryl picks up the pace. The hand isn't doing anything yet, just stopping Glenn, but it's in Glenn's space and the tool is pissed and this could go south fast but Daryl is ready. He's been ready for it to go south since they arrived and he's not going to let anybody -

Then the tool tries to take a punch at Glenn and Daryl's flying. 

He isn't worried about Glenn - Glenn can more than handle himself. But that other dick, the one from the gate who told them they had to give up their weapons, he's sneaking up behind Glenn when Glenn isn't even fighting back really, he just ducked and gave the tool one good punch - 

But that other guy is trying to pull a fast one on Glenn like a fucking pussy, a coward, and Daryl's tackling him before he can get two steps.   
  
He pins the guy to the ground, feels him struggle underneath him, but he doesn't let up. Trying to jump Glenn from behind, gang up two against one, that ain't right, and if these people think that's worth doing, that it's okay, then probably all of them think that, all of them fight dirty, they pretend they're so good with their fucking wall and their flower gardens and their showers but underneath -

Someone is trying to pull him off the guy but he won't let go. Fuck these people, fuck them, fuck -

"Let's not do this now," he hears Rick say in his ear, and it makes him loosen his grip a little. Shit. You're our backup, Rick had said, don't make them suspect you - 

But everyone around them is staring at Daryl, their eyes burning into him, and so Rick pulls him away and yanks him back and he doesn't go for the guys again. But he can't stay still, not after that, not when no one is holding the other guys back, they could go for them at any second, any, and Daryl will be ready, he won't let them -

"I want everyone to hear me, okay?" Deanna says, and Daryl knows what she'll say. Fighting isn't permitted, it's against the rules (even though they fucking started it) so, unfortunately...He can hear her taking breath and he wonders with detached dread what the others will do when he gets exiled. Will they come with him, blame him for losing their new home? Or will they stay and leave Daryl to reap what he's sown?

But Deanna doesn't say any of that. She talks about community, equality, and who the fuck are these people? Daryl's head starts to ache behind the eyes because he doesn't understand what the fuck they want, what any of the rules are, and it's exhausting. 

"You two, come talk to me." 

But she's not pointing at him, she's pointing at the fucker from the gate and the smug one who tried to deck Glenn. He doesn't look so smug now. 

"Head home, Daryl," Rick says to him quietly. "We'll talk later."  
  
Dread pools in his stomach again. Yeah, they'll talk later. Rick'll fucking -   
  
"Daryl," Rick says again. "Head home."  
  
Where is that?   
  
Daryl just nods, jerkily, and goes back to the house. He doesn't go inside. Can't bear it. Goes out back instead. Parks under a tree. Leans back and closes his eyes.   
  
Why can't things just make sense?

Rick doesn't come for him for a while. If it weren't Rick, Daryl'd think he was trying to fuck with him. Get him nervous with waiting, anxious, then - But Rick wouldn't do that. He's pretty sure. Rick's probably trying to let him cool off. So he sits out there until dark, ripping up grass and trying to breathe, and then he goes around to the front to sit on the front porch. He thinks maybe he can listen at the door a minute before he goes in. Make sure it's a good time. 

But within moments of stepping foot on the porch, Rick is there. Daryl wonders if he were waiting for him.   
  
"We good?" Rick asks, and Daryl tightens his jaw and nods.   
  
"Yeah." He sees what Rick's wearing, then - cop clothes. Blue jacket, blue shirt. Something glints from his chest, almost like a badge.   
  
"All right. Good." 

Carol steps out then, closes the door behind her. She's still wearing that sweater but it isn't doing much in the cool of the evening - she wraps it a little tighter around her.   
  
"You all right, Daryl?"  
  
"Guy din't even touch me," he mumbles, but darts a look at Rick. This is it. Time for a little talk - 

But Rick just says, "It was a good tackle."  
  
Daryl must look startled, because Rick says "What did you expect me to say? Keep your hands to yourself? Someone tries to jump one of our people, I want them down. You did just right."  
  
Daryl nods, slowly. Looks at Rick, up and down. "You a cop again?"  
  
He wonders how Beth feels, seeing Rick dressed like a cop, like the officers at Grady. Wonders if she feels like him, like Rick like this is hard to recognize. This isn't the Rick he knows, the Rick that values him. This is a stranger.   
  
He's on the porch with two strangers he thought he knew and the thought makes him feel small and alone.   
  
"I'm trying it on for size," Rick says, and Daryl nods like that's an answer.

"So we're staying?" Carol asks. Her tone is so carefully not approving or disapproving that it says something all by itself.  
  
"I think we can start sleeping in our own homes," Rick says. Which isn't an answer and the idea of it makes Daryl twitch. Split up. Keep them apart at night, when they're sleeping, when they're vulnerable - "Settle in."  
  
"If we get comfortable here, we let our guard down - " Carol starts, and in the dark, if he averts his eyes, he can forget about the stupid cardigan, the little earrings. "This place is gonna make us weak."  
  
"Carl said that," Rick says. Daryl wonders about what. About Ron's house? About fucking Mickey? Or just about the way everything here is soft, soft pillows on soft beds with soft carpets, and that being surrounded by all that softness can't help but rub off on them? "But it's not gonna happen. We won't get weak. That's not in us anymore." Rick's voice is sure and certain and Daryl wishes he felt that certain.   
  
"We'll make it work," Rick continues. "And if they can't make it - then we'll just take this place."  
  
And Daryl wonders which to hope for - that Alexandria will toughen up, or that they'll remain weak and defenseless.   
  
Daryl doesn't know. He just knows that, either way?   
  
It looks like they won't be leaving for a while.  
  



	11. Forget (Part 1)

The next morning, Daryl is woken by a hand to the shoulder and he bumps into the wall trying to get away before he sees it's just Carol, holding a finger to her lips.   
  
She doesn't say anything and he doesn't either as he follows her outside. Everyone else is still sleeping. The light coming in from the window is pale pink.   
  
On the porch she sits on the steps and holds a mug in her hands. "Coffee?"  
  
Daryl grunts. He likes coffee fine but he'd rather know what he's doing out here.   
  
"S'matter?"  
  
"Nothing. Just thought we could watch the sunrise."   
  
He stares at the lightening sky. Starts chewing on one of his cuticles. Carol's wearing a sweater that looks like some fancy person's sofa. She catches him looking at it and smiles. "Too much?"  
  
Daryl just shrugs.   
  
"Rick wants to take us out today. Talk about some things."   
  
Daryl's heart leaps. "Outside the wall?"  
  
"Yep. We'll leave when he's ready. Sound good?"  
  
It sounds amazing. Carol takes a sip of her coffee, her eyes watching him over the cup.   
  
"I remember, you know. You're not an indoor cat."  
  
_You a cat person? Vicious creatures. Ain't nothing sadder than an outdoor cat thinks he's an indoor cat.  
  
_His hands tighten reflexively around his knees and he feels himself pulling himself smaller. Carol notices. She notices everything.   
  
"What's wrong?"  
  
He doesn't want to talk about Joe. If Rick hasn't told her, Daryl sure as hell won't. It's not like anything that bad had even happened there. There's nothing to tell. But he finds himself speaking anyway and he's surprised about what he says.   
  
"Why you actin' like this?"  
  
Carol doesn't pretend not to know what he's talking about. He appreciates that. "It's easier sometimes," she says simply. "To be invisible."  
  
Carol's never been invisible. Even at the quarry - maybe other people wrote her off, let her fade into the background, but Daryl didn't. Maybe because at the quarry, he'd sometimes been invisible too, and she'd always noticed him. This wasn't Daryl's type of invisibility though - he'd learned that if you were quiet and sullen enough, if you said the absolute minimum and did the absolute minimum, at a certain point people's eyes just skipped over you. At school, in town sometimes. No one ever noticed him unless he was with Merle. Or his dad. It worked at home sometimes, but not often. Very rarely was his dad preoccupied enough to skip over Daryl.   
  
He never had to do this - put on some kind of front like everything was fine, better than fine, perfect. Everyone probably figured his life sucked, poor and trash and with his crazy brother and his drunk dad. No one was digging deeper to find out more. It'd probably been different for Carol. She'd probably had to fool everybody, had to try.   
  
He wonders how Sophia felt about it, this mask, and he can't even guess.   
  
"Y'like it here?" he asks instead.   
  
"It's just a place," she says, and his heart lightens up some. "It's not any different than any other place."  
  
"The others think it is."  
  
"I don't know if they do. Maybe they just want it to be."  
  
He sneaks a look at Carol. "D'you want it to be?" Maybe this is the life Carol always wanted. Nice house, nice neighborhood, nice clothes. No Ed. Maybe this was the life she wished she'd had, maybe - 

But Carol just shakes her head. "They're weak, here. We're not. So one way or another the place will change. Or we'll go." She looks at him. "We'll just do what we have to do until we know which way it's going."  
  
She reaches out and brushes his hair out of his eyes. He lets her. "I know it's not - it's not your style." He wonders if she'll say 'indoor cat' again, steels himself. "We just have to tough it out a little. Put up a mask. Just until they trust us. You have to try."  
  
"Dunno how," he mumbles. "Ain't - " He looks at his grubby jeans, his dirty hands, his hacked off shirt sleeves. "Ain't like even 'fore all this I'd a been able to blend in here."  
  
"Just - follow Carl's lead. You just have to - try and make them forget about you. Give them no reason to take a second look." She tucks his hair behind his ear. "I know, pookie. I don't like it either. But we've got to try. Right?"  
  
He picks at his nails and he nods. He doesn't know why he feels better - Carol hasn't said anything new. Except that she knows what she's doing and she's doing it on purpose and she hates it too. That gives him something, eases something in him that's been tense and unhappy since he heard her call Ed wonderful to Deanna. This is a part of surviving too. If he can think of it like that, maybe it'll be easier.   
  
And at least he knows Carol hasn't changed, not really. Even though seeing her like this will make it hard to remember. 

Rick opens the door - he's in his cop outfit and it looks even weirder in daylight. He closes the door behind him quietly, grins at them.   
  
"Well. Should we go practice our shooting?"  
  
The woman at the gate is someone Daryl hasn't seen before and she looks at them close, then back at Rick.   
  
"It's all right," Rick says. "They're with me."

"Um - Deanna said -"  
  
"We've got what we need," Rick says. He flashes his gun. Carol smiles brightly and holds up her gun too.   
  
"I've got to keep practicing. Rick says I'm getting better, though!" She beams. "One of these days maybe I'll be able to hit the side of a barn."  
  
Daryl shifts. Feels his bow across his back.   
  
"Daryl's pretty good with that crossbow but we're still working on the guns," Rick says. The woman at the gate nods, slowly.   
  
"Uh - okay. If you're - sure -"  
  
The tromp out into the woods and for the first time in days, Daryl feels like he's at home. 

* * *

The walker is stumbling around somewhere behind them, but not close enough to worry as Rick and Carol plan.   
  
Daryl wonders why they brought him. Could they just tell he needed some time outside? Or is this them trusting him, is this them saying, you're part of the team, you belong? Daryl doesn't know and he tries not to care.   
  
They're talking about the armory, about getting guns to store for emergencies, and the idea of having guns to hand makes the tension in Daryl's shoulders that's been present since the gates closed behind them ease a little. 

"So what do you think?"

"We can go in when it's empty," Carol says. Her face is set, determined, focused. It looks at odds with her flowery sweater.   
  
"How is that? It's locked up at night," Rick replies. Daryl thinks. The supplies are all stored in a house. You could scale up the back wall, go in from upstairs -  
  
"The window," Carol says. "There's just a latch. I can leave it open."  
  
"A latch?" Rick sounds like he can't believe that people would be dumb enough to leave all their weapons secured by one little latch. Daryl believes it. The Alexandria people aren't stupid. But they're dumb.   
  
"Yeah," Carol says. She sounds like she knows they're dumb too.  
  
"What if one of those pricks shuts it?" Daryl asks. He's listening out for the walker, but he falls back in easy. It's like planning at the council at the prison, pointing out whatever can go wrong and making the person with a plan solve it.   
  
"Wait a couple of days, leave it open again," Carol says. She shrugs a little when she says it. Daryl guesses she's right. It's a long game they're playing, in Alexandria. They can afford to move slow.   
  
Maybe.

The walker's getting closer and Daryl pivots around, tries to see where it's coming from.

"S'gettin' closer," he warns them, and Rick keeps going.  
  
"We need to do it sooner than later. Right now, they're not watching us. Not worrying about meetings like this," Rick says. He looks at Daryl and Daryl feels that flush in his chest - like pride that Rick needs him, that Rick picked him for a secret meeting, not Glenn or Abraham or Maggie. "We may need the guns, we may not -"  
  
"We will whatever way it goes," Carol says, and Daryl nods. They'll need them.   
  
They just don't know for what yet.

"They're the luckiest damn people I ever met. And they just keep getting luckier."

"How's that?" Daryl asks. He thinks of the walls, the food supplies, even the guns. Yeah. They'd gotten lucky. But sooner or later, everyone's luck ran out. Didn't it?  
  
"We're here now," Rick says. And yeah, Daryl gets what he means. They're lucky they've got people who actually know what they're doing, sure. But their luck can run out too. Daryl thinks about Tyreese and Noah, the days with no rain. Thinks about Joe, about the Governor. Luck runs out. You couldn't count on it. Ever.  
  
"They've got a couple of footlockers just full of 9 millimeter autos, Rugers, Kel-Tecs. Just tossed in there. They don't use them. They're never gonna know they're gone," Carol says. he wonders how she figured all that out, about the Rugers, the Kel-Tecs.   
  
Maybe being invisible got her somewhere after all.  
  
But Daryl jerks his chin towards the blender, top off, where Rick says he hid a gun when they arrived. "Someone's got one now, right?"

Rick sighs. "Listen, the others, we want them to try," he says. He looks at Daryl, and so does Carol, and he shifts from foot to foot. 

  
"You, too," she adds and he scowls a little. Yeah, whatever. He gets it. Time to blend. Whatever.

"So we keep it quiet. Just us." Rick looks at Carol, at Daryl, and Daryl feels that swell in his chest again. He's a part of something. A valuable member of the team. It's something real, and the feeling of Rick looking at him suddenly feels like a lot, so he swings around.   
  
"Here it comes," Rick says behind him, but Daryl's already readying his bow.   
  
"I got 'im."  
  
"Hey, wait," Carol says. She steps forward, gun held surely in hand, and fires off eight shorts, one after another. Last one, straight to the head.   
  
"We said we were taking me out shooting. I couldn't go back with a full mag," she says as she holsters. Daryl looks at the scattered gunshots on the walker's chest. Yeah, and having a walker here that looked like someone had to try eight times to get a kill wouldn't be a bad thing either.  
  
"Lucky he came by," Daryl mumbles, and he's rewarded with a grin from Carol, a real one. 

Rick looks up at the sun. "We should get back. You'll pull the latch, we'll pick our moment. Us, we don't need to be lucky."  
  
Dixon's make their own luck. That's what Merle had said, when he played the lotto or craps or whatever. You don't sit back and wait for luck to find you. You wrestle it with your hands and make it do what you want. Rick's like that too, Daryl guesses.  
  
"What the hell's that?" Daryl blurts out. He squats next to the water, brushes its forehead clear. "That a W?"

"Yeah," Carol says, and they all look. It's weird because it looks like it was cut into the thing after he was a walker - the way it splits and the color of it, it feels more recent than the state of decay the body is in. Daryl looks up at Rick whose jaw twitches, once.   
  
"Come on," he says. "Before they start asking what took us so long."  
  
"I'ma stay out a little longer," Daryl says. He doesn't phrase it like a question but he knows Rick could still say no. "Try and bag somethin' for dinner. They ain't so well off their they'll say no to a boar or a deer."  
  
Rick looks at him a long second. Then nods. "All right. Be back by dinner, yeah?"  
  
"Yeah," Daryl says, hoisting the bow up on his shoulder. "Yeah, I will."  
  
"Be good," Carol says, like she really is his mom or something. He scoffs.   
  
And then they leave him and for the first time since Aaron found them, Daryl lets himself fully breathe. 

* * *

Or at least, he's breathing until Aaron fucking sneaks up on him like some kind of stalker asshole.   
  
"Come out!" He knows it's not a walker. Walkers don't hide. Their feet shuffle along in a constant movement. lurching and stilted. They don't slow down, they don't still. He can tell the way the leaves stop for a second, the way they shift, it's something with a brain making those noises.   
  
Or at least, something with what passes for a brain. "Now!"  
  
He should have known it'd be Aaron. 

"You can tell the difference between walkers and humans by sound?" He sounds surprised, and Daryl frowns. Can't he?   
  
"Can you tell the difference between a good guy and a bad guy? Rick doesn't seem to be an expert at that." Daryl's frown goes harder and he almost spits. 

"There ain't much of a difference no more," he mumbles. He lowers his bow.

"That how you feel about your people?" Daryl thinks about it a second. Rick, Glenn, hell, even Eugene and Abraham - they ain't bad guys. But would he think so if he were from Terminus? Or from Woodbury? Would it matter, if they were bad guys to other people if they were good guys to him?   
  
Is he a bad guy or a good guy? He thinks he knows the answer. He doesn't like it.   
  
"Why you following me?" he snaps, because these are all trick questions and suddenly he's scared of answering them wrong. Words fuck him up and they just told him, try, blend in, pretend. But he doesn't know how a normal person would answer these questions, he doesn't know what Aaron wants from him, he doesn't -   
  
"I didn't know I was. I came out to hunt rabbits," Aaron says. Daryl looks at the gun on his shoulder, the fucking backpack on his back. Guy couldn't go half a day without a roll of toilet paper and a bag of snacks? "I know why you're out here."  
  
Daryl narrows his eyes. What does that mean? What does he know? He knows Rick and Carol and him had that meeting, near the old house? He knows that Daryl's a sore thumb in Alexandria and he feels safer out with the walkers and the wild boar than he does behind the walls? Or does he just mean he knows Daryl's a hunter and there's only one thing he'd be doing wandering the woods with a crossbow?  
  
"Mind if I join?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. Looks away. It's not like he could really say no. It was Aaron's community, Aaron's woods. And Daryl was meant to be playing along.

"Keep up," he snarls, stalking off. As Aaron follows, he adds "And keep quiet."

* * *

Keeping quiet is an impossibility for Aaron.   
  
"Surprised you're out here on your own," Aaron ventures after a minute of silent tromping.   
  
"Ain't quiet," Daryl mumbles, barely a whisper.   
  
Aaron lasts another minute. "Not that - I mean, I saw what you could do, on the road?"  
  
The reminder of being watched makes Daryl stiffen, and the reference to the road makes the back of his neck go red. What'd he see Daryl do? Stumble around like a fucking idiot looking for water for two days? Eat a wild dog he didn't even shoot? What'd he see that made him think he knew who Daryl was?   
  
"Anyway, I'm not surprised they'd let you out on your own, is what I meant."  
  
"Ain't nobody gotta let me," Daryl says. "Ain't a kid."  
  
"No. No, of course not."   
  
"You're scarin' the game," Daryl says, and he stalks ahead. 

Aaron's quiet for a while after that - Daryl picks up on a trace of a deer, old but not that old, and for a moment he forgets that Aaron is there. Well, not forgets, but he doesn't care. It's like when Beth or Rick or even Carol goes out with him - when people get used to being quiet and he's able to just focus on the work, the signs. But Aaron isn't used to being quiet, clearly, because after ten minutes he starts talking again.   
  
"You from Georgia?"  
  
Where else would he be from? He doesn't even dignify that with a response.   
  
"I went to Savannah, once, with a boyfriend - he was really into boats."   
  
Oh. Oh. Is that why - he looks at Aaron, then looks back at the ground. Feels his shoulders tightening. He'd heard Rick and Maggie talking - about Aaron and Eric, about how they lived four doors down, about - and now he feels stupid and embarrassed he didn't put it together for himself. The tone in Aaron's voice when he saw Eric was okay, sitting in the back of the RV practically nursing him, living together - 

Is that why he was following Daryl? Is that - 

"Where in Georgia?"  
  
"Mountains," Daryl says, and he tries to calm down. He's not some dumb kid and Aaron isn't Joe or Dan - if he needed to he could finish Aaron in two seconds, he could - 

"Like Appalachia?"  
  
He says it the wrong way, Appa-laish-ya.   
  
"Appalachia," Daryl corrects.   
  
"Oh, wow. Must have been beautiful."   
  
He thinks about it - the trees against the sky, the quiet of the woods, the smears of yellow and red and orange that made up the sunset - and he shrugs. It was just a place. It wasn't any different than any other place. 

"I grew up in Vermont. The Green Mountains. Probably not even what you'd consider mountains, but - beautiful, too." The man sounds wistful for a moment.   
  
It's around then that Daryl finds the hoof prints and Daryl stops listening. 

"I've been trying to catch him for months," Aaron says as they creep close to the horse. He's beautiful - black coat shining as he chomps down on some grass. Daryl thinks of the odds, of how fast that horse must be to last this long. "Bring him inside." For a moment Daryl's glad, fiercely glad, that the horse didn't get caught. "His name is Buttons."  
  
Buttons?  
  
It reminds him of the names of the horses at Hershel's farm. Nellie, who threw him. Post. Bluebell. This horse doesn't fit the name Buttons. But maybe those horses hadn't fit their names either, had had to grow into them.   
  
"One of the kids saw him," Aaron explains, almost sheepishly. "Running by the gate a while back. Thought he looked like a Buttons."  
  
That kid is blind. This horse doesn't look like he's anything but his own.   
  
"I haven't seen him for a while," Aaron says, and the gladness in his voice makes Daryl like him a little bit more. "I was afraid it was too late." Aaron's digging in that stupid backpack - for what, an apple, to try and tempt the horse? That won't work - but he pulls out a rope and Daryl gives him a grudging moment. Yeah, okay, there's some useful shit in the backpack. Whatever. "Every time Eric or I come close he gets spooked."   
  
Daryl's not surprised. Clean people like that trying to catch him, rope him in, make him theirs - it'd be enough to set anyone off. He remembers Hershel in the stable, brushing Nellie, asking him where he learned to ride. _For you to get out to the creek says something._ Daryl hadn't spooked Nellie, not at first.   
  
He doesn't even ask before he takes the rope from Aaron, slings his bow over his shoulder. Aaron looks mildly concerned, but he doesn't fight Daryl for the rope.  
  
"Have you - done this before?"  
  
"Naw," Daryl says, looping the rope over his arm. He remembers Flame at the prison, remembers mucking out his stall. "My group did." He remembers the day Michonne and Rick came back with the horse in tow, sweaty and triumphant. The look on Hershel's face. "But they weren't out there that long."  
  
This horse has made it almost two years on his own. He doesn't need them. But they might need him.   
  
"Longer they're out there, the more they become what they really are," Daryl explains, and he feels Aaron's eyes on him as he starts to creep forward, slow, deliberate.   
  
"I ain't gonna hurtcha," Daryl says, low, soft. The horse nickers, shifts from foot to foot. If Daryl can get him back to Alexandria, he won't let them call him Buttons. He'll get him a real name. Or maybe he won't let them name him at all. He can just be Horse, just be what he is. He won't let the Alexandrians forget he's a wild thing who can look after himself. "A'right? C'mere, boy."  
  
Maybe that can be his job. If he brings the horse back, Deanna will have to let him take care of it. Right?  
  
The horse just bends his neck, starts munching on the grass. Like he doesn't mind Daryl is there. The line of his slim legs, the bend of his neck, the raggedy looking mane. Beautiful. "Yeah, that's right," he says quietly. "Jus' keep on eating." They'll feed him good at least, at Alexandria. That's something.

"Yeah, good boy." He clicks his tongue like Hershel used to do. "Yeah, you used to be somebody's, huh?" Because he must have. It wasn't like there were wild horses running around DC, and he's too calm with Daryl for him not to have been used to people at some point. "Now you're just yours," Daryl whispers, and something wells up in him. Maybe that's what makes him step on the twig.   
  
The horse pulls back, neighs, and Daryl steps back, ready to wait, to try again. That's when he sees the walkers.   
  
He doesn't know how they creeped up on them. That tall grass. And maybe Daryl had distracted the horse - the horse gets out of there pretty fucking quick when the walkers show up. Which is good for the horse, but not great for Daryl, because now they have no horse and there's no way he can get any distance between him and the walkers, no way to get a better angle.   
  
"C'mon, they're comin'!" he yells, fully anticipating he's going to have to save Aaron and his dumb ass backpack, when he hears the whistle and thud of silenced gunshots. 

Yeah, okay. Maybe Aaron's not as useless as he looks. 

He's looking at Daryl the same way. 

* * *

It's easy to pick up the trail - the horse wasn't exactly being sneaky, and Daryl'd seen which way it ran off. Aaron seems a little surprised.   
  
"You still want to - I mean, we can head back. The roamers -"  
  
"Know where it is now, might not later," Daryl says. He looks at the walker corpses strewn about the field. "Should be a'right." He braces himself to argue the point, for Aaron to put up a fuss, but he doesn't. He just nods and they keep going.   
  
"You ride horses?"  
  
"I ride bikes," Daryl says, because what kind of dumb question is that? Why would he be trying to chase down a horse if he didn't think he could ride it? 

"I'm guessing you don't mean ten speeds." Daryl scoffs. What does that mean? He might have ridden ten speeds. Hell, he could have been some mountain biking whiz or be training for the fucking Tour de France for all this guy knows.   
  
"I know you're feeling like an outsider," Aaron says, and it makes Daryl almost stop dead. What? How? Can faggots just tell other faggots by looking at them?   
  
Not that Daryl's a fag. He isn't, he's not, he - but if Aaron thinks he is - 

"It's not your fault, you know."  
  
Fuck. They're so far out in the woods and now -

"Eric and I, we're still looked at as outsiders in a lot of ways. We've heard our fair share of well-meaning but hilariously offensive things."   
  
Is he trying to tell Daryl it'd be fucking okay if he was a fag? He's not. He's -   
  
"From otherwise really nice men and women."   
  
"I - I ain't like that," Daryl croaks, and he feels Aaron look at him curiously.   
  
"No, I didn't mean - I just meant, people are people. The more afraid they get, the more stupid they get. Fear shrinks the brain. They're scared of you and me for different reasons."  
  
Oh. Oh. He's just - he's talking about Daryl being rough, being trash, being surly. He's not -

Oh. Something in him expands. Fear shrinks the brain, he thinks. His brain feels bigger now that he knows what Aaron is talking about. 

"They're less scared of me because they know me," Aaron says. "It's less and less every day. So - let them get to know you."  
  
They don't want to know Daryl. The more they know, the more they'll be scared. He remembers shooting an arrow through Billy's head, beating Harley's head against the truck. Remembers shooting in Woodbury, the cries from the other side of the smoke. Standing over his dad's body, twisted from the car crash, knife in his sweating hand. Shane whupping his ass in Hershel's barn, his dad tarring the shit out of him.   
  
They don't want to know him. And he doesn't want to know them. He knows enough people.   
  
"You should go to Deanna's party tonight," Aaron suggests. Daryl squints at him. He didn't even know there was a party tonight.   
  
"I got nothin' to prove," he mumbles. Because he doesn't. He's proof enough, all of him. Dirt and scars and blood all the way down.   
  
"It's not about proving," Aaron says. "It's about -"

"I seen a lot a bad people," Daryl interrupts. And he has. Before and after the world came to an end. "Doin' a lotta bad shit. They weren't afraid of nothin'." He thinks of Shane, his dad, the Governor. Joe.   
  
He thinks of Rick and Glenn and Michonne. They're scared. They're scared of what they've done, of what they'll do. They're scared they don't get to come back.

Daryl isn't scared. He isn't. Because there's no back to get to, for him. It's been ugly from the first and it's never going to be any other way. So he's not fucking scared, he's not, not of Alexandria, not of Deanna, not of Rick looking at him with disappointment, not at Carol disappearing.   
  
He's not scared. He's not.  
  
"Yeah," he hears Aaron behind him as he puts on a little speed. "They were."

* * *

They find the horse too late. 

They find the horse too late and a walker almost gets Aaron and by the time Daryl's run back, smashed them up, and gotten back to the horse, the walkers have already gotten him.

The horse is screaming - Daryl can see one eye, wide and white, the flailing hooves - but it's too late, it's too late, it's too late.   
  
They shouldn't have tried to catch him. If they hadn't, maybe the horse would still be alive.  
  
It was a wild thing and they'd tried to take it and twist it and in doing so, they'd killed it.   
  
"He always ran," Aaron said. Daryl'd looked away, busied himself with his bow when Aaron put the horse down. He'd have done it himself but he doubted an arrow would do much. It's a relief to hear the wheezing stop.   
  
Daryl wonders if Aaron is understanding too, that it's their fault, that they did this. From the look on his face, Daryl thinks he is.   
  
"You were tryin' to help 'im," Daryl offers. And Aaron was.   
  
But trying doesn't do anything. And wild things do better without that kind of help.

Aaron doesn't say anything else the rest of the way back.


	12. Forget (Part 2)

There's no one there when he gets back to the house. It's dark and quiet. 

Daryl takes a shower. A real one. He can feel the grime and the blood on him and there's no one else around. The hot water feels weird, almost too hot after months of freezing cold splashes in ponds. 

He finds his one shirt with sleeves. He puts it on. The sleeves feel restrictive, too tight. He tugs at them. 

There's a note for him on the counter. WENT TO DEANNA'S - PARTY!! COME SEE US WHEN YOU'RE BACK.

He should go, he knows. At the very least just to tell Rick and Carol he's back. Maybe tell them about the horse. Maybe not. 

He wonders if they're still doing the armory plan tonight. The party'd be good cover. But if they are, him walking in could be the wrong kind of distraction. 

He makes his way over anyway. The house is bright in the darkness. He can hear the murmur of voices, the clink of glasses and bottles. Through the window he can see Mikey and Carl talking over something, can see Abraham's ginger hair, Rosita's hat. He scowls, shoves his hands in his pockets. Whatever. He'll see them when they get back. Preferably with guns. 

He almost jumps out of his skin when Aaron calls out to him. 

"Thought you were going to that party over there," Daryl says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. He feels stupid, being seen in his shirt, his hair still damp from the shower.

"Oh, I was never going to go 'cause of Eric's ankle, thank God," Aaron says cheerfully. Daryl stares.

"Why the hell did you tell me to go, then?"

"I said try. You did. It's a thought that counts thing." 

Daryl doesn't get people. Especially not Alexandria people. He really doesn't.

He starts off again. "A'right."

"Hey," Aaron calls, and he stops again. "Why don't you come in? Have some dinner."

"Ain't a fuckin' kid," Daryl snarls. "Can make my own damn dinner."

"I never said you couldn't." Aaron pauses. "Come on, man. It's some pretty serious spaghetti."

Spaghetti. The word makes Daryl's stomach rumble. He thinks about the house, empty, dark, whatever food there is in there probably from a can - not that he wouldn't eat it. But something warm and hot and it sounds like really cooked - 

"Whatever," he grunts. 

But he follows Aaron in.

* * *

The house is warm and bright and Eric smiles at him from where he's sitting at a table, cutting slices of crusty bread. The house smells like sauce and butter and garlic. 

Daryl hovers near the door as Aaron comes in - brushes a kiss on the top of Eric's head. Eric just keeps cutting, like it's normal, like there's nothing unexpected about someone kissing him hello after two minutes outside. 

"Daryl, sit. Can I get you anything? Aaron and I are having wine, but I think we have soda somewhere if you -"

"Uh," Daryl says, and he looks at the table. Wineglasses. Set for two. Aaron shouldn't have asked him in here. And he finds himself tracking, in a way he always is, the bottle, looking at the level. "M'fine."

"We've got coke," Aaron says. "Or are you a Pepsi guy?" 

"Uh - jus' water's fine."

"Sure." Aaron goes to work at the counter. Daryl doesn't know what to do. It's rude not to help, he figures, but if he offered to help he wouldn't know what to do. He never worked the kitchen tent at the prison and it's not like it's a deer that needs breaking down or something. His hands still have rings of dirt embedded around the fingernails. They wouldn't want him touching their food anyway. 

"Sit, sit! You're making my neck hurt looking up at you!" Eric says, still grinning, and Daryl lowers himself, cautiously, into a chair. He sits on the edge - if they tell him to go, he'll be gone in a second, and he'll be gone even faster if they try anything.

But they don't try anything. Aaron hands him a glass of water and hands them each a plate and they serve themselves from a big dish in the center, with a separate spoon and everything. Daryl tries to only take a little - they'll think he's a greedy asshole - but it smells so good and there's so much of it and they don't say anything about it as he starts shoveling it in. 

"So, Daryl," Eric says. "Aaron says you're from Appalachia."

He says it right - hard sounds in a soft voice. Daryl nods. 

"Me too. Tennessee. Farm boy." Daryl sneaks a peek at the man through his bangs. Yeah. That tracks. 

"What about you?"

"Din't grow up on no farm," he mutters. He's almost done with the spaghetti on his plate and he jerks back as Eric's arm brushes close to him. But he's just loading up Daryl's plate with seconds. 

"Aaron said you were pretty good with the horse today, that's why I ask." 

Daryl looks at Aaron, who looks pained. He looks back down at the spaghetti. "Not good enough."

There's a pause then. Aaron clears his throat. 

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen," Daryl says quickly. Is that what this is? They're trying to catch him out? "Maybe almost nineteen."

"Sure," Aaron says, and Daryl watches as he reaches out for the wine glass. Drinks. But he still seems easy, relaxed. Daryl knows how quick that can change though. 

"Can't imagine all of this going down when I was eighteen. You're way more capable than I was. I was mostly worried that I wouldn't be able to do my own laundry when I got to college."

"Mama's boy," Aaron teases, eyes dancing over the rim of his wine glass. 

"I had plenty of chores! Just - laundry wasn't one of them. My first week in the dorm I did something wrong with the soap and suds went absolutely everywhere, I was mortified - "

Daryl just keeps eating. It's weird sitting here, listening to them talk. 

"How's the spaghetti?" Eric asks. 

"S'good," Daryl mumbles. He feels messy all of a sudden - there's probably sauce all over his face, like Judith or something. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve, then catches sight of the napkin, neatly folded next to his plate. He grabs it awkwardly, uses it. The napkin is cloth and heavy and so clean it feels weird to get it dirty, but Daryl guesses that's the point. "Thanks."

"When you're out there, if you happen to be in a store or something, Mrs. Neudermyer is really looking for a pasta maker," Eric says. Daryl feels himself grow instantly wary. What does he mean, out there? He thinks Daryl's gonna sneak out? He won't. Even today he hadn't snuck out, Carol and Rick took him, they - and what does this fuck even care if he goes out, he'll go out if he wants, he'll - "And we're all really trying to get her to shut up about it. I mean, we have crates of dried pasta in here, but she wants to make her own or something." Why are they talking about making pasta? He looks guardedly over Eric to Aaron, who Daryl can read slightly better.

"I really think she just wants something to talk about, so... if you see one out on your travels, it would go a long way to..." But finally Eric trails off, sees the look on Daryl's face, on Eric's. "Oh. I thought it was done."

Thought what was done? 

"You didn't ask him already?"

"I need to talk to Deanna first."

"Ask me what?" Daryl says. He shifts on his chair a little. He doesn't like this - people talking about him when he isn't there, asking Deanna stuff about him, he -

"I - why don't we go out to the garage," Aaron says, pushing back from the table. "Eric can wash up."

Daryl looks from Aaron to Eric, Eric who is grinning at him. He stands up too - keeps his distance from both of them. 

"Whatever," he says. And they go out to the garage. 

The garage would be Merle's dream. The bike frame poking out from under the cloth, the lines of parts, of neat tools. Daryl runs his fingers over it. Remembers sitting in the shed beside Merle, Merle swigging a beer, loose and easy. Remembers riding the bike, clinging to Merle's back, the wind tearing at his fingers. A lot more power than the long gone dirt bike. 

"This the kind of bike you were talking about?"

"Where'd you get it?"

"When I got the place, there was that frame and some parts and equipment. Whoever lived here built them."

Daryl squints at the parts. "S'lotta parts for one bike."

"Whenever I came across any parts out there, I brought them back. I didn't know what I'd need."

Daryl nods. 

"You have any ideas?"

Daryl scowls at the parts, at the bike. At the memories of tinkering in the shed with Merle, of pulling apart and putting back together the dirt bikes out of whatever they could find. Daryl shrugs. 

"Dunno. Mostly worked on motocross shit, you know. My brother's Triumph sometimes, but - " He shrugs. "Ain't like an expert."

"Well. I always thought I'd learn how to do it, but I get the feeling idea you already know more than me." 

Daryl just shrugs and tries not to covet the bike, the frame, the parts -

"I wanted to talk to Deanna first because I don't know that she'll say yes."

Daryl scowls. "She ain't the boss of me."

"Well, she's the boss of me, and if I want to bring on a new partner, I have to clear it with her."

"A new partner for what?"

"Recruiting." 

Daryl stares at him. 

"Look, I know you're young, but - you can handle yourself out there. I've seen you. And I don't want Eric risking his life anymore -"

"Jus' want me riskin' mine, right?" Daryl snarks. Because of course the only reason he'd want Daryl around is cannon fodder. Someone to throw to the walkers the second things get tight. 

"It's not the same kind of risk if you know what you're doing." Aaron sighs, runs a hand through his curly hair. "I don't know. I mean, you're a kid."

"M'eighteen, m'not -"

"Even at eighteen, you're - the point of this place is to start building something like what we had before. A place where kids can be kids."

"I ain't a kid," Daryl says again. 

"I know. You're - you're good out there. But you don't belong out there."

Aaron's wrong. He belongs out there more than he does in Alexandria.   
  
"I know it's hard," Aaron says, and the understanding in his voice makes Daryl look at him. "Getting used to people getting used to you. And I understand that right now, maybe you need to be out there sometimes. So do I. I'd rather you go out with me than by yourself."

"Don't need nobody else watching my back," Daryl says. Because the only thing worse than having no job is getting dragged around behind Aaron like some kind of pity prize. "Can take care of myself, I ain't -"

"I know you can," Aaron says firmly. "That's not - I wouldn't take someone out with me if I didn't think they could hold their own. You saved my neck today."

"Y'did the same thing," Daryl says, his neck growing hot. "I din't - "

"You did," Aaron says. "But the main reason I want you to help me recruit is because - you do know the difference between a good person and a bad person."

Daryl thinks about Joe. The Governor. Rick. Glenn. 

Yeah. Maybe he does.

"And if I can get Deanna to say yes - which is an if, I don't know if I can - then, well." Aaron gestures at the skeleton of the bike, hidden under the drop cloth. "You're gonna need transport."

Daryl doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know Aaron - he sort of hated Aaron until today. But Aaron has given him the perfect gifts, big ones, and people don't do that for nothing. Nothing is for free. He shifts uncomfortably. 

But he doesn't think Aaron wants to hurt him. It doesn't mean he won't - look at the horse today, look what they'd done to it with only good intentions. But Daryl's been around enough people to know that not wanting to hurt you means something, even if it isn't a whole lot. It's worth more than nothing. 

And he'd get to go out. 

So he jerks his head, once. Bites his lip. Shrugs. 

"Ain't got nothin' else to do," he mumbles. He can feel Aaron's eyes on him, and he shrugs one more time. Looks up. 

"Thanks." 

Aaron nods at him. Smiles. "I - I would have told you sooner, asked if you wanted to. But if Deanna said no, I didn't want to get your hopes up." Aaron looks Daryl up and down. "But I hope she'll say yes."

Daryl nods. 

He hopes she'll say yes too.

* * *

The others get back later, drunk and sloppy and happy. Even Rick and Carol seem happier, although they don't say anything in front of the others. 

Daryl sees when the next day when they meet in the same spot.  
  
"Take your pick," Carol says, spreading the guns out like candy. Daryl feels a clench of guilt in his gut when he sees them. They need them, sure, but he thinks about Aaron's face in the garage. Saying Daryl knows good people from bad. Is this what good people do?   
  
Daryl doesn't know. But he doesn't say anything. They got them now, anyway. It isn't like they'll sneak back in and put them back. Carol's brow is slightly furrowed looking at him, and he takes one. It's heavy in his hand.   
  
"You all right?" Carol says. Daryl shrugs.   
  
"Yeah, guess. Just -" he looks at her through his bangs. "M'tryin'."  
  
Rick hesitates a moment too, but he takes one.   
  
The rest go back in Carol's bag, for who knows when. For who knows why.   
  
Daryl hopes he never has to see them again. 

* * *

"Aaron said he'd talk to Deanna," Daryl says as they walk back to the walls. "About - me maybe goin' out with him."  
  
Rick looks at him appraisingly. "You want to do that?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. Feels the gun shift slightly in the small of his back. "Better'n bein' stuck in there."  
  
Rick's thinking, Daryl can tell. "Daryl, I - I know we rely on you a lot. I know I do. But -" He struggles for a moment. "If you - if you wanted to just be a kid, hang with Carl and Ron and uh - Matty -"  
  
"Mikey," Daryl mutters.   
  
"Yeah, them. You could - do that. It wouldn't be a disappointment, it wouldn't be letting us down. We know you'll be there for us. We know that."  
  
"He knows," Carol says.   
  
And he does.   
  
"I ain't - s'like Carol said," he mumbles. And Joe, he thinks, but he doesn't say that and he doesn't flinch when he says it. "M'an outdoor cat. I ain't -" He shrugs again. "S'better for me, to be out there. An' Aaron - Aaron seems okay."   
  
Rick looks at him for a long moment and nods. "Well. I'll have your back, she comes and asks me. I know you're - I don't know." Rick runs a hand over his face. "Sometimes I think we've done you a real disservice."  
  
It's like a blow.   
  
"We haven't," Carol says firmly, and Rick looks at her.   
  
"I mean - even Carl's able to. Relax sometimes. Be a kid. We shouldn't have -"  
  
"We didn't do anything we didn't need to do," Carol says, and her tone is hard. Her hand comes out and takes his shoulder, not gently but not harshly either. Almost like she's just reminding herself of something. "And he's still here."  
  
He is. And maybe he wouldn't be, if they did things diff erent. Maybe if he hadn't been raised by his dad, if he hadn't been tough already, already known how to fire a bow and how to walk in the woods and how to get hurt, maybe he wouldn't have made it this far. He thinks about Carol back at Hershel's farm, saying he didn't have to do this, they shouldn't make him do that. She doesn't say that anymore, because she knows. She knows there's no point in being left behind and playing games if it means that him not being there gets them all killed.   
  
They need him. And Daryl needs to be needed. And maybe that's enough for everyone.   
  
"He's still here," she says again, and he feels her hand, the warm weight of it. "That's all that matters."  
  
It is.


	13. Spend

Daryl spends most of his time after that in Aaron's garage.   
  
Aaron and Eric don't even mind - they give him the code so he can let himself in from the outside, but he can walk through the house too. Sometimes he goes in to use the bathroom or Eric will come to the garage and ask if he wants a drink. At first being in their bathroom was a nightmare - it was so clean, with matching white hand towels, and Daryl felt like one big piece of grease. But it got easier. It reminds him of the stable at Hershel's, the time in there checking over Shawn's dirt bike.   
  
He doesn't know where things stand with Deanna and he doesn't ask. He just decides to think about it like a done deal. Because otherwise he'll lose his mind, trapped in Alexandria. So he works on the bike and thinks about going outside the walls. 

Everyone is trying to find their place. Carl hangs out with Ron and Mikey and Enid but afterwards he'll stop by the garage and watch Daryl work.   
  
"They're okay, you know," Carl says as Daryl tries to figure out if the piece he's holding actually belongs to the bike or is some weird thing Aaron scavenged or if it's broken equipment the guy who used to have this house was messing around with.   
  
Daryl grunts. "Yeah, I know." And he does know. Mikey is fine - pathetically excited to hang out or do anything, but fine. He looks like pre-apocalypse he didn't have a ton of friends and now that people have to be his friend, he'll do whatever it takes to keep them. Which is okay. He guesses.   
  
Ron is harder to read. There's something about Ron that reminds Daryl something. He doesn't like the way he speaks for Enid, the way he's always laying a claim to her. Enid doesn't seem to care - Enid doesn't seem to care much about anything - so maybe it's just an excuse. But Ron is sizing up Daryl too, whenever he's around, and Daryl wonders if there's something in him Ron recognizes too.   
  
Enid doesn't talk to him and he doesn't talk to her. They both seem to like the other better for it. 

"I mean - they're not like - whatever, but -" Carl is struggling to articulate it. "My dad thinks it's nice. That I have friends."  
  
"Uh-huh."  
  
"I - he just - I don't know." Carl's face looks blank. "It's normal."  
  
Daryl looks at Carl - Carl who has been trying so hard to be someone Daryl doesn't necessarily understand. "Ain't like anything is normal," Daryl mumbles.   
  
"Yeah, but. The grown ups want it to be."  
  
Is this true? He guesses. That's why they keep walking, keep trying. Because there's an end point the adults think is lurking just over the next horizon. He wonders why they don't get it - that maybe the before was what was not normal, the walking around pretending everything is great and wonderful when for most people it wasn't. At least now, the ugliness is out in the open.   
  
"You could hang out with us sometimes. It'd be fun."  
  
"You havin' fun?"  
  
Carl frowns, then shrugs. "I'm getting used to it."  
  
"Yeah." Daryl decides the piece in his hand is probably garbage and he puts it on the table.   
  
"I mean - just that it's weird. They're strangers."  
  
And Daryl isn't. The implication makes his stomach feel warm for a second.   
  
"C'mere. Help me figure this out," Daryl says, and Carl scampers over as eager as Mikey. 

After that, Carl spends more time in the garage, but he spends time with the other kids too. The adults seem to be finding their way. The first blush of joy upon entering Alexandria is getting tinged, here and there, with questions, with frustration. It's not that that makes Daryl happy exactly. But at least it makes the people he knew on the road stay familiar.  
  
Daryl does school for two disastrous days. He shows up scowling and the teacher, an elderly woman who maybe used to teach kindergarten or something a million years ago, seems so frightened of him that it makes his temper even shorter. Plus she's trying to get him to read shit out loud to her so she can 'ascertain his progress' but Daryl knows it's because she thinks he's dumb and that he can't read. He reads out loud, his redneck accent getting thicker and thicker as he goes, but he doesn't mess anything up and the woman seems surprised. The next day isn't any better. The third day, he just doesn't show up, and she never says anything. Probably she's just glad he's out of her hair. And it's not like he needs school. He's got other things to do, better ones. Two days is enough of a try. He's done.

* * *

It's three days after that when he's heading over to Aaron's and gets stopped by Ron's dad.  
  
He's seen him around - at Ron's house that first time, walking around town. But they've never actually spoken, so it weirds him out that the guy stands right in front of him and smiles.  
  
"Hey there. Darnell, right?"  
  
"Daryl," Daryl mumbles.   
  
"Right, right. How are you doing? Settling in all right?"  
  
The man seems weirdly intense and Daryl shrugs. "Fine."  
  
"Great. Well, come on."  
  
Daryl stares at him. "What?"  
  
"Well - everyone gets a check up when they come in. I know Rick is being stubborn about his kids, but that's no reason for me not to look you over. I've already done some of the others in your group. Might as well get it over with."  
  
"Don't need a check up, m'fine," Daryl spits out. Feels the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Why is this bigshot surgeon so eager to get him alone somewhere? "Sides, should ask Rick."  
  
"Why? He's not your father. You're old enough to make your own decisions, aren't you?"  
  
Daryl takes a step back. "Yeah," he says. "An' I said m'fuckin' fine."  
  
Something flashes in Pete's eyes at that. "There's no need for that language. I'm trying to help you."  
  
"Don' need no help neither," Daryl says. He can feel his tongue getting thicker, his accent more pronounced. There's something about these northern fucks (even though Rosita laughs that he's calling Virginians 'northerners') that makes him talk even trashier than he normally does. It's not deliberate but he likes the feeling he gets sometimes when he does it - like fuck them, they can't do shit, they don't know shit.   
  
"I hear they're talking about letting you outside the wall."  
  
That makes Daryl pause. For Pete to have heard about it, they must be talking about it. Deanna, Aaron. Rick. "So?"  
  
"So - I don't know if I would sign off on someone going out there who I hadn't personally checked over. An underlying health condition, a -"  
  
"I don't got no underlying condition," Daryl snarls.   
  
"There's no way to know unless I check you over."  
  
Daryl spits.   
  
But he follows Pete to his office.

* * *

For all of the tension and the fighting to get Daryl in, the check up once he gets there is strangely normal.   
  
A blonde woman with glasses is reading a book in the corner of the clinic room and looks up. "Oh. Sorry, Pete - I mean, doctor, I was just -"  
  
"It's fine, Denise. I'm just going to give Daryl here a once over. Hop up on the table."  
  
He wonders if Denise is going to leave, or if she'll stay. He wonders which he wants. But she doesn't move. She just sits there, still reading her book.   
  
Pete looks in his eyes, his ears with the flashlight. He holds open Daryl's mouth with the tongue depressor, makes him go 'Ah.' He doesn't ask Daryl any questions and Daryl doesn't ask any. He hesitates when he lies down on the table, stiffly, but Pete just pokes his stomach, his ribs, and has him sit back up. He hits his knees with the rubber hammer and Daryl watches his knees move without his consent.   
  
"Good reflexes," Pete mutters, writing something down. "Should have guessed."   
  
When Pete leans over him, Daryl catches a whiff of booze and he stiffens further when Pete shoves something cold and metal down the back of his shirt.   
  
"The fuck're you doin'?" Daryl snarls, jerking forward, but Pete puts a hand on his shoulder, too firmly.   
  
"Stay still. I'm listening to your heart."   
  
Pete's hand doesn't move from Daryl's shoulder, holding him in place, a little too tight. Daryl feels his heart starting to beat faster, his breathing. Can Pete see his scars under his shirt? It's none of his fucking business, it's - 

Pete pulls the stethoscope back out. His fingers brush over the scars as he does. Deliberately?   
  
As Pete does his front and finishes up, telling Daryl when to breathe, taking his blood pressure - trapping his arm in some weird fucking cuff - Daryl wonders what the point of this all was. There's nothing wrong with him. He thought Pete trying to get him alone was weird and creepy, thought he might have wanted - but he hadn't done anything. Because Denise was here? But he didn't even try to get her to leave. 

What had Pete expected to get out of this? Was it just the control - making Daryl come, making Daryl do shit he didn't want to do, finding out stuff Daryl didn't want him to know? Or was there some other point?   
  
He thinks about it the whole way back to the house, darting out of the doctor's office the second he's able. He doesn't say goodbye.   
  
He doesn't hear Pete say anything either. 

* * *

He was going to go to Aaron's, to work on the bike, but he feels strangely off from his weird ass encounter with Pete. He goes back to the house instead and almost runs into Pete's fucking kid moping on his porch.   
  
"The fuck?" Daryl asks, and the kid's head swivels around like an owl. It's the little brother. Daryl's never caught his name, has never said two words to him before. He's always hovering at the edges, trying to hang out with Ron and the others, or sitting in the kitchen with his mom. 

Of course the first two words he says to the kid are 'the fuck'. He'll probably run off and tell his fucking dad right now. He'll - 

But he just hangs his head back down, moping. "Sorry."  
  
"Carl ain't here." He doesn't know what else the boy could want.   
  
"I was looking for Carol."   
  
Daryl looks at the house. "She ain't there?"  
  
"No, she is, just -" The kid gets a cagy look on his face. "I'm not supposed to say."  
  
Daryl stares at him. "Whatever." He starts to step around him and go up the steps.   
  
"Do you - um - do you know how to get into the store rooms? Without - people seeing?"  
  
What's this kid want? Does he know about the guns, about Carol? Daryl looks around. "Why?"  
  
"I - I need to - get something. From the pantry. Could you -"  
  
"Whyn't you ask your brother?" Daryl mutters.   
  
"He told me to buzz off. He thinks I'm annoying."  
  
The kid is kind of annoying, but he also looks pathetic. "Why can't you just ask for whatever?" What could the kid want that Olivia wouldn't fork over?  
  
The kid's mouth presses into a line. "It's - it's rationed."  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"Um -" The boy bites his lip and thinks for a comically long time. Daryl is about to give up and step over him when the boy blurts out, "It's chocolate, okay?"  
  
Daryl resists the urge to roll his eyes. Kids. "Don't need nothin' fancy to get that. Just distract Olivia and nab it from the fridge when she ain't looking."  
  
The kid is staring at him like he's a criminal mastermind. "Distract her how?"

* * *

Daryl isn't sure how he ended up here and he tries not to think about it. 

"Uh - I gotta question," Daryl says, and Olivia bustles over, surprise in her eyes behind her glasses.   
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Uh - so I heard about the lady who uh - really likes pasta," Daryl says. He's not sure when he's the one doing the distracting part of the plan instead of the stealing. Sure, Olivia'd probably be watching him like a hawk - she is now, behind her surprised eyes - but still. Talking seems way more the little kid's strong suit.   
  
"Mrs. Neudermeyer?" Olivia rolls her eyes. "We've all heard from her -"  
  
"Uh - Aaron'n me're gonna go out," Daryl says. He can see the kid sneaking in, exaggerated tiptoes, behind Olivia's back. "On a run?"  
  
"Oh?" Olivia says. She looks Daryl up and down. Daryl holds back a scowl. It's to his advantage to have her looking at him as long as possible. The kid is lifting the door to the freezer like it's something alive, like it'll squeak or bite him or something.   
  
"Yeah," Daryl mumbles. "So, uh - someone said to like look out for a pasta thing but I don't -" He tries to look pitiful, like some kind of north Georgia bumpkin. He's not sure how successful it is. He feels ridiculous. "I ain't never seen a pasta maker? So I don't uh - 'zactly know what I'm lookin' for?"  
  
Olivia is smiling hugely. "Oh sure - if you can find one, then we'd all be grateful. And not just for the pasta! Shelley Neudermeyer is -"  
  
He tunes out Olivia's chatter - he stiffens when she turns away, about to ask her a question to redirect her attention, but she just grabs a pencil and turns back to him, not even noticing the kid with his arm shoved into the freezer up to the elbow. Daryl watches as she sketches out a pasta maker on a pad of paper - shit. You couldn't just use like a rolling pin or whatever for that? The kid disappears around a corner just when Olivia looks up.   
  
"Here, take this with you - anything to get her to shut up!" Olivia says cheerfully, ripping the page from the notepad and handing it to him. He takes it without really knowing what it's for, nods.   
  
"You're the hunter kid, right?"  
  
"Yeah?" He's so close to getting away, and he doesn't know where this is going.   
  
"I already asked Sasha, but - if you're ever out there and you get a boar? If I could get a leg -"  
  
These people are so weird. "Uh. Yeah. I'll - keep an eye out."   
  
Olivia beams at him. "Thanks, Daryl!" Is that all it takes for these people to pretend to like him? To say he'll try and get stuff for them?  
  
Daryl's sure the kid'll be long gone, but he's inconspicuously hiding in the bushes outside of the pantry. He smiles widely at Daryl when Daryl walks past.  
  
"I did it! Look -"  
  
"Don't," Daryl hisses at him, and the boy stops, immediately silent. He looks at Daryl, almost scared, and Daryl scowls uneasily. Fuck. "Naw, man, I jus' mean -" He nods his head back at the house. "C'mon."  
  
The boy follows him down the street, until they're passing Pete's place. Daryl stops.   
  
"Got whatcha need?"  
  
The boy nods eagerly.  
  
"Good. You were - uh - real sneaky," Daryl says, and the kids smile gets so big Daryl's surprised it doesn't break his face.   
  
Daryl starts walking again and the kid follows.   
  
"I've got to give a bar to Carol," he says - he's taking almost two steps for every one of Daryl's, practically skipping to keep up. "She's going to teach me to make cookies. She'd probably teach you too, if you want."  
  
"M'good," Daryl grunts. But the boy is undeterred. 

"I didn't get any at the party. Were you at the party? I didn't see you. Were you with Ron? Ron's my brother -"  
  
"I know Ron's your brother," Daryl scoffs. "Been in your house, ain't I?"  
  
"Oh yeah! But you're not there that much. Carl is there more. How come you don't come with Carl? You could hang out with me if you want. If you don't want to hang out with them, I mean. I'd give you some cookies, if you want them. I mean, once I learn how to make them."  
  
This kid is almost as eager for a friend as Mikey. Daryl shrugs. "I dunno. Maybe." The boy practically skips up the stairs. Daryl trudges next to him and almost smacks into him when the boy stops short.   
  
He's staring at the door. "I - earlier I went in without knocking."  
  
"Bet Carol loved that," Daryl says. He'd be surprised if she hadn't jumped the kid.   
  
"So maybe - maybe I should knock this time." He looks up at Daryl. "Or, I mean - it's your house, right? You don't have to knock."  
  
"Ain't mine," Daryl says. "Jus' stayin' here, you know. With the others."  
  
The kid nods, but his face looks like he doesn't get the distinction. "Could - do you want to knock?"  
  
"Man, jus' c'mon." He opens the door. Carol pops out of somewhere almost immediately.   
  
"Sam, you better - oh. Daryl. I thought you'd be with Aaron."  
  
He shrugs. He was going to tell her about Pete - not whine or anything but just say the guy gives him the fucking creeps. But maybe he shouldn't say that in front of Pete's fucking kid. "Found somethin' for you outside," Daryl says instead, and Sam - yeah, he guesses that's the kids name - peeks out from behind him at Carol, a small grin on his face, the little baggie with chocolate jiggling in his fist.  
  
"Are you sure you don't want to come?" Sam asks as he trails after Carol like a puppy dog. "I bet if we ask her -"  
  
Daryl thinks he can see Carol's shoulders twitch once with laughter. "Naw, man, m'good. Got work to do." If he's not going to work on the bike he might as well do some maintenance on his bow.   
  
"Okay," Sam says. "I'll bring you a cookie when I'm done! If you want!"  
  
"I - whatever," Daryl mumbles. And the boy is off into the kitchen.   
  
Some people have claimed rooms but Daryl is still sleeping in the living room.   
  
"So what do we do first?" Sam asks brightly, and Daryl's a little surprised at the brusqueness of Carol's response.  
  
"First we stop asking questions. I'm only going to show you this once, all right? Wash your hands."  
  
He hears the sink turn on, the clatter of things being taken out.  
  
"Break these into the - never mind, give me those." He hears eggs cracking.   
  
"Wow, you're good at that," Sam chirps. 

"Here. Stir."  
  
He's never heard Carol talk to a kid like that before. She'd never talked to Sophia like that, ever. Or Mika or Lizzie - she'd been firm but not hard. She's being hard at Sam now and Daryl sort of gets it - Sam is annoying and persistent and too much, but - 

"I've never baked anything with friends before. My mom doesn't like to bake. I mean she used to but now -"  
  
"We're not friends," Carol says, and Daryl thinks he hears an almost imperceptible wobble in her voice. "Here."  
  
Oh. 

Oh. He remembers her face, the anguish - _I don't know if I'm good enough to take care of anyone, some people don't deserve the love we give them_. She'll take it from Daryl, grudgingly, still not convinced. She won't take it from Sam, this nothing kid, who has a family and friends and a life. She won't let herself get involved in it.   
  
It makes Daryl feel weird - sort of glad, that she isn't doing this to him, pushing him away, and sort of pitying. Poor Sam.   
  
Whatever. Not his problem. He grabs his bow and slips out onto the porch, his favorite part, down below most people's eye line. He's got work to do anyway.

* * *

When the door opens, Daryl braces himself for it to be Sam, holding a plate of cookies, trying to get Daryl to try one. It is Sam. But he's not holding anything.   
  
He bursts from the house quick, practically flying off the porch, and he lands awkward and topples onto his hands and knees. Daryl's up and over before he really knows what he's doing.   
  
"Lemme see," he grunts, and the boy flinches back from him, pulling his hands in to his chest. The knees of his pants are muddy and he looks at them despairingly.   
  
"Oh no," he says, distressed. He rubs at the dirt, but Daryl smacks his hand away - it'll just make it worse. "My dad's gonna -" He cuts himself off and looks at Daryl accusingly.   
  
"What?" Daryl asks. He stands up. Sam skitters back on the ground a little. "Keep doin' that you'll have mud all over your ass too," Daryl notes, and the boy stops immediately.  
  
"I gotta go," Sam says, and he clambers up and starts to walk away. 

"What's wrong?" Daryl asks. Even though he doesn't care, whatever, this dumb kid with his dumb floppy haircut and his puppy dog eyes. "Burn your cookies?"  
  
Sam shrugs with one shoulder. He's looking at his hand - it's pink and rough from smacking the ground when he fell, but Daryl doesn't see any blood. "I shouldn't have taken the chocolate anyway," the boy mumbles. He rubs his hand on the side of his pants.   
  
"Whatever, man. It's chocolate. Ain't -"  
  
"We should have taken a gun instead."   
  
Daryl stops and squints at him. "Whatcha mean?"  
  
"Carol took a gun," the boy says, low and fast, and then looks instantly regretful. "I - I mean, no, I didn't mean - she didn't -"  
  
"S'okay," Daryl says slowly. "Already knew."  
  
The boy relaxes some. "I promised I wouldn't tell."  
  
"Yeah, well, don't tell nobody else," Daryl says roughly. "You'll get her in trouble."  
  
Sam nods. Bites his lip. "I thought if Carol was my friend she'd - " He shakes his head. "It doesn't matter."  
  
"Carol ain't - it ain't about you," Daryl says finally.   
  
"I should have just taken the gun instead. Would you -" The boy looks hopeful. "You could - you could distract Olivia again, and then I could -"  
  
"What you even need a gun for?" Daryl asks. But something is prickling on the back of his neck, uncomfortable. He scowls. "They ain't toys, they -"  
  
"I know that!" Sam says fiercely. "It's not - it's to protect somebody! That's what they're for, right?" Sam's eyes dart behind Daryl. "I - I gotta go. I should change before my dad -"  
  
"Before your dad what?" Daryl asks, but Sam is gone, whipping around a corner. And when Daryl turns around, Carol is there, arms crossed over her chest, lips pressed together. 

"We might have a problem."

* * *

He tells her about Pete with his arms crossed tight over his chest. It's not like anything happened and he doesn't know what it means with what Sam's doing, but he watches Carol's face get tight and she straightens her sweater and smoothes at her hair.   
  
"Take those cookies out in six minutes," she says, and he stands up.   
  
"What - where you goin'?"  
  
"I'm going to get some answers out of Sam."  
  
"He ain't - he went home."  
  
"Then I'll get them out of Jessie. And I'll give Pete a piece of my -"  
  
"Don't," Daryl says, and she stops what she's doing and looks at him. He thinks of Pete's hand skimming over the scars on his back. "Y'don' - know what'll happen."  
  
Carol shakes her head. "I'm not - I have to," she says, and she checks the cuffs of her shirt.   
  
"Naw, I mean - I'll come too," Daryl says, and she shakes her head again.   
  
"You stay here. It's nothing to worry about. We've dealt with worse," she says, and Daryl wonders if she's talking about Ed or his dad or walkers or Shane or the Governor or Terminus. He doesn't know.   
  
"Don't talk about me though," Daryl says. "He ain't - he din't do nothin' an' if you go in all mad -"  
  
She kisses the top of his forehead. "I'll be fine," she says. "Five more minutes on those cookies. Okay?"  
  
And then she's gone.   
  
He's in Carl's room upstairs - from the window, at roughly the right angle, you can see the street outside of Pete's house. He sees Carl march up on the steps, that stupid smile on her face but steel in her spine. He doesn't breathe until two minutes later, when she walks back down and he sees her striding back towards home, determined steps.   
  
He takes the stairs two at a time to meet her and almost runs straight into Rick. "Whoah there," Rick says, a hand out, and Daryl flinches back, pure instinct. "What's the matter?"  
  
Daryl's mouth is opening and closing like a fish - what is the matter? Nothing concrete. Just weird feelings and weird looks and a kid too focused on protection for someone raised in the safe sanctuary community of Alexandria. He's spared answering by Carol coming in, closing the door behind her, and turning directly around.   
  
"Pete's hitting Jessie," she says, and Rick's face does something strange. "Maybe Sam too."   
  
"You know this how?" Rick says. His eyes go from Carol back to Daryl. "Sam tell you?" He's looking totally at Daryl then, and Daryl shakes his head. Sam hadn't said anything.   
  
Neither had Sophia, that first time they spoke, near the campfire. But he'd still known.   
  
"He didn't have to," Carol says, and Daryl nods.   
  
He wonders if that's what Carol would have said about him, back at the Atlanta camp.   
  
Rick blows out a breath, runs a hand through his hair. Steps forward towards the window with the blind over it like he's looking for something.   
  
"Rick," Carol says, and he turns back. Daryl's biting at his thumb. "I know how this is going to go. With Pete. There's only one way it can go."  
  
Daryl knows too. Either they say nothing and nothing changes, or they say something and Pete turns on the charm and nothing changes except he hates Carol and Daryl. Daryl knows this is the only way it can turn out but he dreads hearing Carol say it. Doesn't want to hear Carol do the math to write off Jessie and Sam and Ron. 

But this is Carol. 

"You're going to have to kill him," she says simply.   
  
And even though things are getting a lot more complicated, something lifts from his chest.   
  
This is Carol. Even after what happened with Lizzie and Mika, after the slog of trying to get Beth in Atlanta, the doubt, this is Carol. And Carol won't let Pete get away with this.   
  
She won't.   
  
Daryl knows that better than anybody.


	14. Try

In the chaos of Glenn and Tara and Eugene's return from the run - Tara slumped and bloody, missing Aidan and one of the other Alexandria people, a woman named Frankie who Glenn seems super torn up about - Daryl wonders if Rick will forget about Pete. 

Carol doesn't though. She's cooking in the kitchen - the kitchen smells warm and she's shoveling something into the oven when he walks in. "It's a casserole," she says when he eyes the oven. "Not for you." But she hands him a cookie.   
  
He perches on one of the stools and nibbles at the cookie. "You think he'll do it?"  
  
"Rick will do the right thing," Carol says. "We just have to make him understand. That it is the right thing."   
  
Daryl nods. The cookie tastes good but it's gritty in his mouth. He puts it down.   
  
"Has Ron ever said anything to you?"   
  
Daryl shakes his head. "Naw. But we ain't - friendly." He thinks. "I mean - I guess he coulda said somethin' to Carl, but -"  
  
There's movement outside the window and Daryl's hand goes to the knife at his belt before he sees Sam's dumb blonde head poking up over the frame. It ducks away again.   
  
"Here," Carol says. She's shoving the plate of cookies into his hands and pushing him towards the door. "Go give him those."  
  
"I - you should," he mumbles, trying to push the cookies back. "I dunno what to -"  
  
"You don't have to do anything," she says firmly. "Just give him the cookies and listen. You're good at that."  
  
Daryl's sufficiently shocked at that compliment that somehow Carol is able to maneuver him outside and shut the door before he can protest again.   
  
Sam's crouched near the edge of the backyard. Daryl can see his fingers, ghostly pale, digging into the grass.  
  
"I got your cookies," Daryl says awkwardly, brandishing the plate. Sam doesn't move. "C'mon man. You worked for 'em." Sam just keeps looking at Daryl. 

Daryl goes out and stands over Sam, which makes him feel weird. "You want Carol?" he asks. Sam shakes his head.   
  
"She doesn't like me."  
  
"She does," Daryl says. "She just - that's her way of showin' it." Sam frowns.   
  
Daryl sits next to him. It's too weird looming over the kid in the dark. If he's got to wait out the kid, he's gonna do it in whatever comfort he can find.   
  
"Did she send you?"  
  
"Yeah," Daryl says. "Here. Take 'em."  
  
"That's all the cookies," Sam says accusingly.   
  
"So?"  
  
"Carol said she was only giving me half."  
  
"Guess she changed her mind." Daryl nudges the plate closer to Sam. "Ain't all of them, anyway. I had one."  
  
"Was it good?"  
  
Daryl's not a huge sweets person, but he nods. "Yeah."  
  
Sam's hand lets go of the grass and tentatively reaches out for the plate.  
  
"My dad's at the infirmary. With Tara," Sam says as he grabs a cookie and starts to nibble on it.   
  
Daryl grunts. Tries not to think about Tara, bloody, limp, slung over Eugene's shoulder.   
  
"Where's your mama?"  
  
"I don't know." Sam's eating his way around the outside of the cookie neatly. "Or - I think she's helping. She helps him sometimes, when he's - " Sam shrugs.   
  
"She who you want that gun for?"  
  
Sam freezes for a minute. Then nods, almost invisible in the darkness.  
  
"She never - uh." Daryl doesn't know how to phrase it. He's never really talked about things like this before - like he's deliberately trying to get information out of somebody, grilling them for their secrets. Not these secrets, anyway. It's weird to be on the other side of the conversation, the side that wants to pry something out of you that's buried deep. "She's good to you, right?"  
  
Sam looks outraged. "She's the best," he says fiercely. "She does school with me and helped me make my owl statue -"  
  
"Yeah, she seems, uh - good." He's had next to no interaction with Jessie, but he didn't think it went that way anyway. Still. He had to check. Right?   
  
"She's great," Sam says, and he's not eating the cookie anymore. He's back to yanking up fistfuls of grass and letting them drop. He doesn't look at Daryl. "Carol's your mom, isn't she?"  
  
"No," Daryl says, surprised. Sam stops yanking grass and looks at him.   
  
"Really?"  
  
"My mama died."  
  
"Oh." Sam looks upset. Daryl doesn't get why - his mama died over ten years ago and it's not like Sam ever met her. "Sorry."  
  
Daryl shrugs uncomfortably. "It ain't - I just travel with them. Rick and Carol and the others. Closest thing to family I got."  
  
"What - what about your dad?"  
  
Daryl yanks at his own handful of grass. There's a moment of ripping that's like a release of pressure, weirdly satisfying. "He's dead too."  
  
"Oh."   
  
They sit there for a moment in silence and Daryl grabs at another handful of grass. Stop being a pussy, he tells himself. He's asking this kid to spill everything and he's not even willing to say -   
  
"Wadn't like he was so great before that," Daryl forces out. Sam is very still next to him. "Used to beat the shit out of me."  
  
He wonders if he's ever said it like that before, offered it up to someone who wasn't asking, wasn't trying to get something from him.   
  
"He hit you?"  
  
What about 'beat the shit out of me' was unclear, Daryl wonders. But he just nods.   
  
"Did he - hit your mom?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. Then nods again. "Fore she died, yeah."   
  
"My dad doesn't hit me," Sam says slowly.   
  
"What about her?"

"My mom would _never_ -"  
  
"Naw, jus' meant - he ever -"  
  
"Oh." Sam shrugs. His fingers are digging into the dirt now with quick, anxious movements. "Um. I don't know."   
  
"A'right."  
  
"I mean - my mom put this - like a bolt? In my closet? To lock it from the inside?"  
  
Daryl imagines Sam, crouched down like he is now, hiding in a closet and trying to make himself small.   
  
"It's not like - it's a nice closet," Sam says quickly. "We put up those stars that glow in the dark and she made me a bed in there and everything. And there's a flashlight if I get scared. And she put my Harry Potter books in there. Because it's kind of like a cupboard under the stairs, right?" Daryl has no idea what that means. "It's like a really nice closet. "  
  
"Sounds it," Daryl mumbles. Sounds fucking great, locking yourself into a closet to sleep every night.   
  
But there's a pang in his stomach, because in some ways it does sound kind of great. It's more safety than he'd ever had in the cabin.  
  
Something in Sam relaxes at Daryl's words. "I'm not supposed to - I'm just supposed to go in and lock it and wait for her to let me out?"  
  
Daryl nods. He doesn't know what else he can say.   
  
"So I don't - I don't know for sure, what happens when -" Sam's voice is wobbly. "I mean. I can't see anything when I'm in there. So I don't know for sure that he's -"  
  
"Yeah," Daryl says softly. "I getcha."  
  
He does.  
  
"But I can hear -" Sam lip quivers and he scowls at the ground. "Did - did your dad ever - yell?"  
  
The question is almost laughable, except that nothing about this is funny. "Yeah," Daryl says. "All the time."  
  
"My dad yells a lot." Sam darts a quick look at Daryl. "I mean - when he yells at me it's mostly because I'm doing something wrong. Like I'm getting stuff dirty or I'm in his way when he's trying to do something, or -"  
  
"Ain't on you," Daryl grunts, and Sam shrugs. "He yell at Ron too?"  
  
"Ron's bigger than me. He's better at stuff." Sam starts ripping up individual pieces of grass into tiny squares.   
  
"Bet he wasn't when he was your age," Daryl says, and he regrets saying it because now he sees a little Ron locking himself in some stupid closet and his heart clenches with pity. Which he hates because he hates it when people pity him and he's sure Ron would hate it too.  
  
"He - I can still hear everything," Sam says in a huge rush, finges obliterating the grass in his hands to confetti. "When I'm in the closet?"  
  
Fuck. The world is so fucked up and it always has been and people are worse than walkers anytime.   
  
"Like I can hear him yelling and breaking stuff and my mom -" Sam swallows.   
  
"That sucks," Daryl says, and it sounds stupid and inadequate the second he says it. Duh that sucks, he's saying he can hear his mom get the shit beat outta her while he's locked up and he can't do anything - and where the fuck is Ron in all this? Locked in his own dumb closet? Or just sitting in his room knowing he can't do anything?   
  
"It sucks," Sam echoes. "But - but sometimes it's better when I can - hear it? Because - because one time last month it got - like all the noise stopped and I came out even though I wasn't supposed to - and Mommy was - she was bleeding and she wouldn't wake up right away and I got scared she was -"  
  
Daryl doesn't understand how hugs and shit work but he puts his hand over Sam's shoulder and squeezes.   
  
"She's okay," Daryl says roughly. "You did good, right? She's fine."   
  
Sam looks at him and bites his lip. "Yeah," he says uncertainly.   
  
Daryl doesn't know what to say. He wants to say that they'll handle it, that his dad will never yell at him again, that Jessie will be fine, that Rick will swoop in and save the day. But he's not sure. Maybe because part of him can't imagine Rick killing somebody in cold blood. And his dad's in there right now working on Tara. They ain't gonna kill him before they know Tara's gonna be okay. Right? So what does he say that isn't a promise but says it'll be okay?   
  
Nothing. There's nothing. Sam's head perks suddenly, swiveling towards his house like some inner tracking device has gone off.   
  
"I - that's my mom," Sam says. He gets up. Through that whole conversation, he stayed crouched, hovering his butt over the earth. His pants look pristine. "I should -"  
  
"Sam," Daryl says, and Sam stops. "It's gonna - we're gonna make it better. A'right?"  
  
Sam nods, hesitantly. Gives Daryl a small, shy smile. Daryl thrusts the plate of cookies into his hands.   
  
"G'wan then," Daryl says. Sam disappears into the night.

And Daryl wonders what the fuck he just did.

* * *

He tells Carol everything and the next morning he wakes weirdly antsy. He keeps darting looks at Rick, at Carol, through the window in the direction of Sam's house. Finally he makes his way to Aaron's garage to pick at the motorcycle - staying in the house is going to drive him fucking crazy.   
  
Aaron is actually in the garage when he enters, which makes him stop short.   
  
"Didn't know you were here," he mumbles.   
  
"Just admiring at your work - it looks great."   
  
Great is stretching it. It looks more like a motorcycle than it did before, which Daryl will settle for. Carl called it the Frankenbike the other day, which Daryl thinks is a pretty good descriptor. He doesn't share that with Aaron, though. He feels mad at himself, a little - he likes Aaron, and Eric. He likes how they don't make him talk and the jokes Eric tells and how they let him use their garage and even offer him food sometimes. But after the discovery about Pete he feels nervous of all these Alexandria people, in their dumb houses, playing pretend that everything is normal. The normal world had been as fucked as anything and who knows what secrets are lurking here, even with Aaron and Eric?

"Ain't nothin'," he says. 

He wonders if he should ask about going out - getting outside the walls of Alexandria today would do wonders for the trapped, nervous feeling crawling around his spine. But Deanna's kid just died on a run so probably any hope Daryl had of getting out of here is ruined. Plus maybe he doesn't want to be alone outside with Aaron right now.   
  
Stop, he tells himself. He'd been out with Aaron before and it'd been fine. He hadn't tried anything and he was - he was good. Nice.  
  
"You want to take it for a test drive?" Aaron asks, and Daryl looks at him uneasily. Is that a trick?  
  
"Ain't - dunno if it works or nothin'." Daryl says quickly. It started up all right - he'd tried that the other day - but it sounded a little rough and he didn't know how far it would go.  
  
"Well. We won't know if we don't test it." Aaron holds out a helmet and Daryl tries to stifle a snort. Merle never wore a helmet. Daryl didn't know anyone who did. Helmets were for pussies.   
  
"Come on," Aaron says, wagging the helmet at him. "You know you want to."  
  
"Ain't nowhere to test it, anyway," Daryl says.   
  
"We could just go up and down the block."  
  
Daryl imagines the eyes peering out of every window, at the redneck kid tearing up their clean and quiet neighborhood. "Naw," Daryl says, shrugging. "Ain't - ain't ready."  
  
Aaron stops wagging the helmet and hangs it back up behind him. "All right," he says easily, but he looks at Daryl a moment longer than normal. "How are you doing?"  
  
Daryl looks at the man. The fuck?  
  
"I heard about Tara. She's in good hands. Pete's very talented."  
  
Daryl just nods. Right. Pete's talented. He's valuable. And Sam's an annoying dingus and Ron is a useless teenager and Jessie cuts fucking hair, what are they worth next to him?   
  
"Alexandria getting any easier?"

"S'fine," Daryl mutters. He wishes he could just plunk down in front of the bike and start working.   
  
"Took me and Eric a while. It's not - exactly our scene." Eric had told Daryl once, when Daryl was getting a drink of water - Eric seemed desperate for company, laid up with his ankle, he'd talk to anyone probably - about working in Africa. Daryl wonders if that's the scene Aaron's talking about now, or if he means some queer thing. "But beats being alone."  
  
Daryl grunts. Yeah. Maybe.   
  
"I haven't - Deanna's still thinking about it," Aaron says. "I think she was - she was leaning towards yes, but after what's happened -"  
  
"Whatever," Daryl says. Feels his heart plummet into his stomach. Hadn't realized how hard he'd been counting on it - getting out there again, where he was good at shit, where he could breathe. "Don't matter."  
  
"It does," Aaron says. "I'm not dropping it. Just - I don't think anyone's getting to go outside for a while."  
  
Aaron sounds antsy too, when he says that, and Daryl looks at him.   
  
"S'fine," Daryl says. "Thanks for - askin'." The words feel clumsy in his mouth.   
  
Aaron grins at him. "Of course. And I'll keep asking. Okay?"  
  
Daryl nods.   
  
"Are you sure you don't want to test this baby out?"  
  
"Ain't a baby, shit," Daryl says, rolling his eyes. "It's a fucking bike."  
  
"You don't call a bike a baby? I thought it was like a ship - you call a ship a she, don't you?"  
  
Daryl shakes his head. "Whatever, man."  
  
"No, that's true - boats are female. You've never heard that?"  
  
The joking tone suddenly rubs Daryl the wrong way and he shrugs. "Dunno. Never been on a fuckin' boat I guess." Has he? He tries to remember. Maybe a rowboat, maybe fishing. But his dad sure as hell didn't call it 'she.'

"Well, I've never been on a motorcycle, so. Guess we're even."  
  
Aaron has the helmet in his hands again. He looks at Daryl. "Come on. You don't want to test it out even a little? I do."  
  
"You do it, then."  
  
"Uh, I think it's a little above my speed," Aaron says, looking at the Frankenbike. "No training wheels."  
  
Daryl snorts. But he takes the helmet.   
  
"Just one lap," he says. He looks at the helmet disdainfully, but he puts it on. The Frankenbike is pretty much glued together with half remembered shit and dreams. He guesses a helmet isn't the worst idea if the thing explodes out from under him. "Just to see if it'll run."  
  
"She," Aaron says.   
  
"Ain't a she," Daryl says. 

"One lap. Okay." Aaron fidgets a second and pulls out a second helmet, a puppy dog look in his eyes. "Or maybe two?"  
  
"Man, you don't even know if it'll run."  
  
"Oh, she'll run," Aaron says, a gleam in his eyes. "I have faith in you."

* * *

It does run. It's more powerful than Shawn's dirtbike or the dirtbikes he rode as a kid. Merle had been super possessive of his Triumph - he'd let Daryl ride on the back with him and taught Daryl how to work on it, but he'd never let Daryl be in control. The roar and rumble of the Frankenbike beneath him feels better than anything has for a while. He almost takes off his helmet - he wants to feel the wind in his hair, even if he is just riding laps around some neighborhood cul-de-sac. But he settles for the way it tears at his bare arms, at the hum of the bike underneath him, the grip of his hands on the handlebars, the purr of the starter when it kicks in. 

He hears Aaron whooping from the sidelines as he zooms by and pretends he doesn't feel the eyes watching him from other porches, from different houses. He pulls up into Aaron's driveway and stops, yanks off his helmet, his hair sticking to his sweaty forehead.   
  
"She runs! Yeah! Daryl!" Aaron says, and he's shoving at Daryl's chest like some giddy kid. It should make Daryl tense up, but it doesn't.   
  
He hears clapping from the house and Eric is there, wobbling on top of his crutches. "Nice work," Eric says enthusiastically.   
  
"All right, come on, my turn," Aaron says energetically, and Daryl shifts slightly.   
  
"I - I don't -"  
  
"You better let him," Eric calls from the porch. "He won't stop bothering you until you do!"  
  
Aaron seems to take that for permission and he swings onto the bike behind Daryl.   
  
It makes Daryl's whole body tense. The arms around his waist are too similar to Joe, which is stupid because Aaron isn't Joe, Aaron wouldn't -  
  
He feels Aaron shift behind him. "Daryl? Are you -"  
  
Daryl just starts up the bike and off the go.   
  
It's better when they're moving. Joe's arm around him was an oppressive weight, holding him in place, keeping him still. Moving is better, and even when Aaron clutches at his waist as they take a corner, Daryl's not as scared as he was when they were stopped because it makes sense, here. He remembers riding on the back of Merle's bike, ten years old and holding on as tight as he could, the scent of sweat and beer and Merle's leather vest, and he thinks of that and pretends Joe never existed.   
  
And if, when they stop and Daryl parks, he's off the bike fast, well, neither Aaron or Eric say anything. 

* * *

He's looking for Carl - he wants to tell him about the Frankenbike, that it's working, to offer maybe to take Carl for a spin - and weirdly, he can't find him. He's a little shocked Carl didn't come running when he heard the bike start up. A bunch of people had - Michonne whistling at him in her stupid cop outfit, Carol smiling from the porch. But Carl he doesn't see.   
  
Ron, he does. But Ron's not looking for Carl.   
  
"You seen Enid?" Ron asks. 

"Naw," Daryl says. He's about to ask if Ron's seen Carl, but something stops him. Maybe it's not good to make Ron notice that Carl and Enid are missing at the same time.   
  
It's the first time he's been around Ron since Sam's confession, and he tries to see Ron differently. Tries to see Ron as some kid barricading himself in a closet, some kid scared of his dad. But mostly he just sees this boy in his nice clothes and expensive shoes, scowling because he can't find a girl that doesn't belong to him.   
  
"You know she's my girlfriend, right?" Ron asks, almost casually.   
  
Daryl didn't know. But he could have guessed. "So?"  
  
"So - she's mine. Stay away. And you better tell Carl to stay away too."  
  
"Tell 'im yourself," Daryl spits. "She ain't a fuckin' doll. She don't belong to nobody."  
  
Ron's eyes narrow and his mouth opens - to say what, Daryl never finds out, because all of a sudden there's a crashing, a shattering of glass, and both of them are running towards the noise, Daryl unsheathing his knife - walkers, how'd they get in, how'd -

But it isn't walkers. It's Rick and Pete.

* * *

It draws everyone like a fight in a middle school cafeteria - everyone is running, Glenn, that prick from the gate, someone is yelling for Deanna, Carl and Enid appear from somewhere, side by side. Daryl sees Sam, a streak of blonde hair hiding behind Carol, Carol who is looking fiercely at what's happening, her face half concern and half something that might be pride.   
  
They're whaling on each other, both of them bleeding, and no one is stepping in, Daryl almost does, but he remembers Rick and Tyreese at the prison - both of them people who liked Daryl but had almost hurt him bad. And Pete doesn't like Daryl. And Rick's got a gun. 

But still. He's about to go and try to pull Pete off of Rick, fuck what happens to him, when Jessie tries and gets thrown to the ground.

Then Rick's back on top and this is Rick like Daryl hasn't seem him in a while. This is Rick from the prison when Lori died, down in the boiler block killing walkers, soaked in blood, this is Rick after he bit Joe's throat out. Carl steps forward and that makes Daryl move too -

"Dad, get off!"  
  
But then Carl is stumbling backwards, knocking into Daryl, and the two of them go sprawling.   
  
Ron is standing there frozen. He doesn't look like he knows what to do. Daryl feels that clench of pity in him again as he helps Carl up, as the two of them turn back to Rick - 

But Deanna is already there. And Daryl's stomach clenches for a totally different reason.   
  
She looks pissed.   
  
And then Rick pulls the gun and everything gets a million times worse. 

Nothing he's saying is wrong. But still, Daryl's not sure whether or not he's relieved when Michonne knocks Rick out.   
  
Everything always has to get complicated.


	15. Conquer

"Are you all right?" Rosita asks.   
  
Daryl and Carl are back in the house. They've spirited Rick away somewhere and Carl has been nearly frantic.  
  
"What are they doing to him?" Carl asks.   
  
"Nothing. He's out still. I patched him up," Rosita says calmly. She's not normally the one in charge of this stuff - but with Rick out and Michonne watching him (or is she watching over him, in case the Alexandrian's try something?), Carol and Abraham and Glenn and Maggie trying to do damage control, Tara still out in the infirmary with Eugene watching over her and Sasha not back from the watchtower yet, Rosita's not doing so bad. "Do either of you need patching up?"  
  
"He didn't do shit to us," Carl spits. "I lost my grip and I knocked over Daryl."  
  
Daryl doesn't say anything. Of course they're both fine, and Rick isn't. Rick would never, to Carl, not even by accident, Rick wouldn't -

Beth comes in, holding Judith, her mouth set in a determined frown.   
  
"I'm going to take Judith for a walk," she says. "Carol says it wouldn't hurt to - remind them." Of what, she doesn't say, and Daryl can only guess. That exiling them is the same as murdering Judith? That Judith is cute and Rick is her dad so maybe he's cute too? He doesn't know. "Are y'all all right?"  
  
"Yeah," Daryl says quickly, before Carl can bite Beth's head off. "Fine."  
  
"Okay," Beth says. She bites her lip. "Michonne and them'll sort it."  
  
"Michonne's the one who knocked him out," Carl says, but it's lacking heat.  
  
"That's the only reason we're not outside the gates already," Rosita adds. "It was the right move."  
  
Carl scoffs but he must know it's true because he doesn't say anything else. 

"Maggie's been doing a lot of work with Deanna. She'll - " Beth stops. "I'm going to take Judith. How do we look?" Beth's wearing a green sweater and blue jeans tucked neatly into her cowboy boots. Judith's wearing some kinda romper with like kittens and shit on it.   
  
Carl is blushing. "Good," he says, and he coughs.   
  
"Good," Beth says, a smile lurking around the corners of her mouth. She looks at Daryl. "You sure you're all right?"  
  
"Fine, I said," Daryl says. "Ain't made a glass."  
  
Beth looks him over one more time and nods. "We'll be back," she says. And she straps Judith into the stroller and sets off on her Judith Grimes Apology Tour.

"Where is he?" Carl asks as the door shuts behind Beth. 

"He's in one of the unfinished places. Michonne is -"  
  
But Carl's heading towards the door too. Rosita steps towards him. "Carl, wait -"  
  
"I'm not going to sit here when my dad is -" Carl wrangles himself back to level. "I'll be - we'll be good. Right, Daryl?"   
  
Daryl looks up. "Me?"  
  
"Well, yeah. You're coming, right?"  
  
Daryl looks from Carl to Rosita. "I - y'think we -"  
  
"It's not a rescue mission, Jesus, I just want to make sure he's okay!" Carl yells, and Rosita puts a hand out.   
  
"If you're going out there, you have to be calm. We don't need anyone else thinking we're unstable violent loonies."  
  
"My dad isn't -"  
  
"Of course he's not," Rosita says impatiently. "But think. He beat up their surgeon. Sure, for a good reason, but he did something when everyone else here has been looking the other way for years. They're gonna feel guilty about that and they're going to want to take it out on Rick, like he's the unreasonable one. And he did smash Pete pretty good."  
  
"Pete smashed him too," Carl says, but without much force behind it.  
  
"And that's on our side. So if you go out there, you go out calm. Serious - no laughing around or joking. You act like you're taking this seriously. Not that you think Rick did anything wrong, or that you're worried - but you just act like you know it's not a joke and that violence isn't acceptable even though it's understandable."  
  
Daryl is looking at Rosita like she's grown a second head. Violence isn't acceptable?  
  
"These people are weak," Rosita says firmly, looking at both boys. "They think they're all good, normal people. They have to see us that way too or we're out of here." Rosita pauses. "Does that all make sense?"  
  
Maybe? But Carl is nodding.   
  
"We'll be good," he says. "Serious. We'll just go straight there and back."  
  
Rosita looks at his face for a long moment. Then her eyes shift to Daryl. "Daryl? What about you?"  
  
"Yeah, sure," Daryl mumbles. "Serious."

And somehow they're walking towards the row of unfinished houses by the west wall.   
  
The streets are weirdly empty. Clusters of people stand on porches or behind windows and Daryl can feel their eyes tracking them both as they go down the street. Daryl's legs feel weird as he walks - is this a serious walk, or does he look like he thinks it's a joke?  
  
"You look constipated," Carl whispers as they cross the street. Daryl sees his head dart from one side to another - Carl still looks both ways before crossing. Habit.   
  
"You look ugly," Daryl says back, and Carl elbows him.   
  
"Serious," Carl hisses, and Daryl has to fight from laughing, even though there's nothing to laugh about. "Think we are gonna have to bust him out?"  
  
"Naw," Daryl says. Some little kid is walking a dog on the path ahead of them and almost drops the leash with fright when Carl and Daryl pass. "They ain't gonna kill 'im. Worst they'll do is make us leave, and they gotta let him out for that."  
  
Carl nods. "Think they will?"  
  
Daryl doesn't know what the fuck the Alexandrians will do. "They do, we'll be fine," Daryl says shortly. "Find our own place near here, set up. Might not have video games or fancy walls but we can make somethin' of our own. We done it before."  
  
"Yeah," Carl says. The trudge along.   
  
"Where were you anyway?" Daryl asks suddenly. "Ron was lookin' for Enid, 'fore everything started."  
  
Carl blushes again. "I - she sneaks out. Over the wall. I followed her."  
  
Daryl stares at Carl, incredulous. "You went outside an' you din't tell me?"  
  
"I - I was following her! I didn't have time -"  
  
"Man, you suck. I been going crazy stuck in here an' you -"  
  
"I'll show you how," Carl says quickly. "I wasn't - I was just following her."  
  
Daryl squints. "Why?"  
  
Instead of answering, Carl blushes. "She shouldn't be out there alone."  
  
"Wadn't she alone out there before?"   
  
Carl's blush deepens. "It's - different."  
  
Daryl doesn't say anything else because he's pretty sure either he'll start laughing or Carl will punch him and neither one of those fits the rules Rosita gave him.   
  
"Careful," he says instead. "Ron's pissed."  
  
"He's probably more pissed my dad turned his dad's face into hamburger meat."  
  
Daryl thinks about the look on Ron's face when he was warning Daryl off. "Dunno," he says. "Might be even."  
  
And then they're there.  
  
Michonne is inside and she looks up when Carl and Daryl open the door.   
  
"Nope," she says instantly. "Not happening. Go home."  
  
Daryl thinks about making some smart ass comment about how long it took them to get to Alexandria from Georgia, how long a trip it will be back home, but he stifles it. Georgia's gone. It's not his home anymore.   
  
"I just want to see him," Carl says pleadingly. 

"He's asleep."  
  
Carl looks worried. "He - he shouldn't be out for that long from just one hit, should he?"  
  
"He's not out, he's sleeping - you can see him dreaming."  
  
Daryl doesn't get the fine distinction between asleep and unconscious, but he guesses that's a good sign.   
  
"I'll look after him, Carl. He'll be all right." She looks at Carl, his hat on his head, his mouth set in a mulish line.   
  
"Are you two all right?"  
  
"Why wouldn't we be?" Carl shoots back. "Oh, wait, maybe because you knocked my dad out in front of -"  
  
Daryl's not sure he's meant to be here for this part. He inches towards the door. 

"What did you want me to do?" Michonne asks Carl, like she's really asking. "Let him keep running his mouth, say something he couldn't take back? Do something he -"  
  
Daryl slips out the door and closes it behind him so Carl and Michonne can have it out.   
  
He's debating whether or not to walk back to the house - would it be bad if he left with Carl and went back without him? - when a group of guys with rifles set up near the stairs a few houses down.   
  
Daryl freezes and ducks backwards, heart pounding. Shit. He'd left his bow behind - Rosita said it wouldn't look right. But three guys with rifles against him and Carl and Michonne, with Rick still out - 

They settle up on the stairs of the house, though, and one of them takes out a pack of cigarettes and lights it. They pass it around. They don't look like they're about to storm the cellar immediately or anything.   
  
But it's definitely not a good sign.   
  
The door opens and Carl, his mouth set in a slightly less mulish line, comes out.   
  
"We should head back," he says, and Daryl twitches his head towards the guys smoking on the stairs.   
  
"Lemme say bye to Michonne first," he says. And he ducks in and tells Michonne about the men watching the door, waiting.   
  
She just nods. "Got it. Thanks Daryl."  
  
Then he and Carl head back, trying for the same mixture of serious and not worried and normal and respectable.   
  
"Now you look constipated," he whispers to Carl, and Carl somehow manages to accidentally step on the heel of Daryl's shoe as they walk. 

* * *

They don't detour on the way back, although now that Daryl knows there's a way over the wall, he wants nothing more than to see it. He could figure out his own way, he guesses, but he'd been trying like the adults had said to. He didn't realize sneaking our might be an okay rebellion, might not be immediate grounds for dismissal. But still. It's a bad day to push. 

The night gets dark fast and everyone is gathered back in the one house. With Rick and Michonne gone, with Tara in the infirmary and the preacher off who the fuck cares where, it feels like there's a lot of room.  
  
"They're going to have a meeting tomorrow," Carol says as they all pick at dinner. "About what to do."  
  
"They're gonna kick him out?"   
  
"They're going to try."  
  
A gloom settles.   
  
"If Rick goes - we'll all go, right?" Rosita says. Abraham runs a hand over his neck.   
  
"Rick's not going," Carol says. "We'll sort this out."  
  
"But -"  
  
"We'll sort it," Abraham says, and it sounds scarier when he says it.   
  
The road is too close behind them for them not to finish every scrap of food, but it's a far cry from the joking and laughing there'd been when they first arrived. 

* * *

The next morning, when Daryl comes downstairs, Rosita is shrugging into her jacket. "Carol says we should all be out," she says, tugging her ponytail free. "They went over to see Rick. Maggie's working on Deanna. Carol says it's a good idea to, you know. Mingle. Remind people how much we've brought with us."  
  
What have they brought with them? Maybe they should have left some of it behind.

"Still - don't be dumb. No goofing, okay?"  
  
Daryl's not sure he's ever goofed in his life.   
  
"Yeah, I know," Rosita says when Daryl just looks at her. "But I gotta say it."  
  
And she's gone.

Daryl wonders where Carl is, if going to see the motorcycle is goofing. Probably they can't ride it, not without looking frivolous or whatever the fuck Rosita kept saying. But he could show it, he guesses. And if the meeting is about getting people to speak for Rick, maybe he can - well, not convince Aaron and Eric to. It's not like he's so good with words that he'd be able to change their minds. But maybe his presence will - remind them of good shit? Or. Fuck, he doesn't know. He just wants to go sit in the garage and look at the bike and not have to talk to anybody.   
  
The garage door still opens for him - for a second, he's not sure it will. He slips in and settles next to the bike. He wants to make a rack to hold his bow - he hadn't brought his bow to do measurements or whatever because Carol said not to walk around with it, but he could start the rack part, figure out how he can attach it. Daryl like s a project so he doesn't notice immediately that Aaron is watching from the doorway.   
  
"What're you working on?"  
  
Daryl jumps and the board he's been messing with tumbles to the ground, knocking a tray of tools as it goes. "Fuck," Daryl says, scrambling down. "Sorry, I -"  
  
"I should apologize. I startled you." Aaron stays in the doorway, which Daryl is glad for.   
  
Aaron doesn't say anything else as Daryl sets the tray up again. Daryl can feels his eyes following him and he doesn't know what to say. "Bet you wish you hadn't brought us back, huh?" Daryl says finally, and the second he says it he regrets it. That's not what he's meant to be doing. He's meant to be convincing people to speak for Rick, not reminding Aaron they weren't any fucking good in the first place. Stupid, fucking - 

But Aaron just says, "I don't, actually. I'm glad you're here."  
  
Daryl stares at him, then looks back at the tools. Starts organizing them on the tray by size, even though that's a dumb way to organize shit.   
  
"Rick - I'll see what I can do," Aaron says. "I wouldn't have brought you if - I know you're good people. And if Pete was really -"  
  
"He was," Daryl snarls suddenly, looking up. "Rick wouldn't a just went off on him for nothin'. Rick ain't like that -"  
  
Aaron is looking at Daryl, his eyes slightly wider than normal, his hands up placatingly. "Hey, I - sorry. I know. I just - I can't believe I didn't see anything before."  
  
Daryl looks away again. Nods, jerkily. Yeah. No one saw anything. But had anyone even looked?

"Jessie's cut my hair every month since I got here, and I never even suspected - " Aaron swallows. "It's just hard to realize that something like that has been happening and you never did anything to stop it. That you didn't even notice."

Yeah. Sure.  
  
"I vouched for you. All of you. Especially Rick," Aaron says. "I'll vouch for him again tonight. I will."  
  
Daryl nods again. "Whatever." Because great, Aaron speaking for them means something, sure - except that since Aaron's already spoken from them, all him speaking again will do will remind everyone what a shitty choice he made.   
  
"Do you want to take her out for a spin?"  
  
Daryl shakes his head. "Shouldn't. Not meant to -" Daryl shrugs. "Ain't meant to goof off."  
  
He runs his hand over the bike though. If Rick gets exiled, he'll have to say goodbye to it after one measly ride.   
  
He finds himself trying to not think about what happens if Rick doesn't get exiled. Or rather, if he gets exiled and decides not to go. If he decides to take Alexandria.   
  
He pushes the thought away. No use worrying about it. If it happened, they'd figure it out. They always did.   
  
"You could go for a ride by yourself. I don't mind."  
  
Daryl squints at him - what does Aaron think he's going to do? Why would taking a ride alone be any less like goofing around than taking a ride with another person? Who would he even take?  
  
"Daryl," Aaron says, slowly, very deliberately. "I'm sorry if I made you feel - uncomfortable, yesterday."  
  
Daryl's mind goes blank. What?   
  
"I - I know you might not be used to - people like me, but I hope you know I would never -" Aaron's mouth twists as he tries to figure out what he's saying and Daryl's stomach is full of ice.   
  
Shit. Aaron had noticed, yesterday, when Daryl got weird when Aaron put his arms around his waist. He thinks it's because - because Daryl's some redneck bigot, because Daryl must think Aaron's a fag and a predator, because -   
  
"It ain't like that," Daryl mumbles, and he feels his cheeks going red. 

"It's all right," Aaron says. "You should - I shouldn't have pushed you to ride if it made you uncomfortable -"  
  
"I said it ain't like that!" Daryl snaps out angrily.   
  
"All right," Aaron says. He's looking at Daryl carefully. "I just - I don't know if you've had much experience with gay people before and - maybe with your background -"  
  
"Don't give a shit you're a fag," Daryl says quickly, and he notices something flash across Aaron's face, almost too fast to track. "Queer," Daryl says, because maybe fag ain't the right word. But that word doesn't seem to get a better reaction. "It ain't - it wadn't that."  
  
"Okay," Aaron says slowly. "But - it was something, Daryl."  
  
Daryl scowls. "Whatever," he says.   
  
"I - " Aaron says, then he stops, a weird look on his face. "You - "   
  
Oh no. Does Aaron think he's a fag now? Maybe he thinks Daryl's the perv, getting off on giving Aaron a ride, on having him pressed up - "Jus' somebody - it jus' reminded me of somethin', that's all. Ain't - ain't about you."  
  
"Daryl, did -" Aaron seems at a loss for words. "Shit. I don't -" He runs his hands through his hair. 

Words always fuck him up and this is no exception. Somehow whatever he tries to say seems to make this shit worse. "Ain't - ain't no big deal," he says. He can feel his breathing change somehow in his chest, and he's furious at himself, at his inarticulate stumbling, at getting so flustered over something that wasn't even real. "Wadn't like - I ain't never liked people touchin' me anyway, jus' - it ain't like I think you're some perv or -" Aaron takes a step forward and Daryl flinches back automatically.   
  
"Daryl, did someone - is someone - touching you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable?"  
  
Daryl wants to scream. What the fuck is happening? "No," he says quickly. "No, not - nothin' ever happened like that, jus' -" Because it hadn't. Joe hadn't actually gotten the chance to do anything other than sleep next to him. For a fleeting moment he wonders if he can say something about his dad as an excuse - it'd even be true, it's not like after getting whaled on his whole life all of a sudden he likes getting hugged or whatever - but that conversation feels like it has the potential to be just as bad as this one. "Ain't like that."  
  
For a second he thinks Aaron is going to keep pushing, but Aaron just nods, very slowly. "I - all right. I believe you."  
  
"Don' gotta believe me, s'true."  
  
"I - you can understand why I -" Aaron runs a hand through his hair again. Daryl wonders how his fingers don't get snarled in the curls. "After this whole thing with Pete, I - I just wanted to ask."  
  
Daryl just nods, curtly.   
  
"Okay. Well -" Aaron laughs uncomfortably. "Do you - want a soda or something?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. What's he meant to do in this situation? Every possibility feels terrible. "I - should get back," he mumbles, and Aaron's face falls.   
  
"Okay. Sure. Try not to worry about tonight. It'll - it'll get sorted out."   
  
Daryl nods.   
  
"Come back whenever you want," Aaron says. "We like having you. Eric and me. We -" He lets out that same laugh. "I hope I haven't messed this all up."  
  
"Naw, y'ain't," Daryl says. His accent sounds so thick even to his ears. He clears his throat. "I get why you - yeah." He's not sure he does get it, but maybe what he gets is that Aaron's a good guy and he was trying to do a good thing. It's not his fault Daryl is fucked up and weird about normal shit. 

"If you want to move the bike over to your place, that's okay too," Aaron says.  
  
"It's yours," Daryl says.   
  
"You did the hard parts. I don't even know how to ride it." Aaron smiles at him. "I - just, you're welcome here any time. With the bike, without it, whatever. Okay?"  
  
Daryl shrugs. "It - should stay here," Daryl says. He thinks about Merle's bike - he'd bought it stolen but even still it'd cost more than Daryl'd seen in his whole life. He can't imagine being able to hand over something that valuable to some random kid. "You got all the tools'n shit."  
  
Aaron smiles at him, wider, easier. "All right. I'll keep it for now. But you can take it to yours anytime. Not a problem. Okay?"   
  
"Yeah," Daryl says. "Okay."

* * *

When Daryl gets back from Aaron's, Carol shoves clean clothes at him and makes him shower. He's able to stop her from brushing his hair for him, but it was a close thing.   
  
"Carl's not going," Carol tells him as he combs through his wet hair with his fingers. "I told Rick that Carl and Judith should both be there, but..." She frowns. "So you're the backup. If we need to talk about Rick as a man protecting his children -"  
  
"I ain't his child," Daryl mumbles.   
  
Carol looks at him for a long moment.   
  
"I ain't - talkin' ain't exactly -"  
  
Carol nods. "I know. That's why you're the backup. If we can get through it without you, you don't have to do anything." She looks at him for a long moment. Bites her lip. "You don't - this is optional," she says seriously. "I - I've already told too many people about Ed. The Alexandria version, not -" She shakes her head. "I just - if I tell them now about -" She can't seem to say it. "Then they'll think back about everything I've said and they'll doubt me. Which we can't have. Which is unfortunate because that story would be -" She shakes her head. "Just - these people are children. They like stories. The best story we can give them is one where Rick is a knight in shining armor. A man of honor."  
  
Daryl nods. He's not sure where this is going.   
  
"If I could, the story I'd tell them would be that Rick saw a woman being abused and didn't stop it himself. It only stopped when the woman's husband died, and he feels guilty about that and so this time he had to take matters into his own hands."  
  
Oh. That's where it's going.   
  
"But you can't 'cause you a'ready told them you how great Ed was," Daryl says mechanically. "But I ain't tol' nobody about my dad."  
  
"Right."   
  
There's a long silence.   
  
"That is optional," Carol says firmly. "I think it makes a good story. An understandable story. But that's your story, Daryl. That's your decision."  
  
Daryl nods.   
  
"Hopefully, we won't even need you. And if we do, you can just talk about being an orphan on the road. How Rick protected you, brought you in."  
  
She says that stuff like it's just a story, like it isn't what happened. Although he guesses it isn't. His dad had been alive, that first year. And Carol'd brought him in first.  
  
"Daryl." He looks up at her. She smoothes his wet hair away from his eyes. "I'm not - That is optional. Really. All right?"  
  
He nods again. "Yeah," he says. "Optional."  
  
"Hopefully you won't have to say anything anyway."  
  
Hoping hasn't exactly turned out great for Daryl in the past.

* * *

The meeting is held at dusk, outside, with a fire going. It's like something out of a reality TV show. Daryl doesn't get how Deanna has room for a party in her house but not room for a meeting. 

Deanna seems done with the meeting before it's even started. Daryl watches the firelight play over her face. He remembers Rick telling them it wasn't a democracy anymore. And Deanna looks that way too. But just by having this stupid meeting, she's pretending it is a democracy, even though she's just going to make all the decisions herself anyway. 

Glenn isn't there. Neither is Sasha, the preacher. Rosita or Tara. Or Rick.   
  
Carol's lips are thin as she looks around the circle, but her smile comes back on the second Deanna can see her face.   
  
Jessie's there, front row, a purple bruise around one eye. Aaron's there too, next to Eric, his crutches leaned up against the wall. Eric gives Daryl a quick smile. 

"We're going to start," Deanna says suddenly, and Daryl hates her.

"Can we wait? There's still people coming. Glenn, Rick," Maggie says, and Deanna just repeats herself louder.   
  
"We're going to start. It's already dark. We're going to talk about what happened. Not the fight. Not what precipitated it. We're dealing with that." Daryl sees how everyone's eyes skirt away from Jessie, an ugly twist at the corner of her mouth.   
  
"We're going to talk about one of our constables, Rick Grimes. We're going to talk about how he had a pistol he stole from the armory, about how he pointed it at people. And we're going to talk about what he said." Deanna looks around, raises her hands in a way that feels like acting. "I was hoping he'd be here."  
  
"She said he's coming," Michonne says firmly, her dumb cop costume making her look official and fierce.

"I'm sure he'll be here," Carol adds quickly. "And I'm sure we can work this all out." She shoots a smile at everyone. 

Daryl's looking for Rick the whole time Michonne speaks - clearly, eloquently. Daryl feels his tongue get thick in his mouth. If everyone speaks as good as Michonne, they won't need him to talk. Right? 

But where is Rick? He thinks for a moment, about those guys hovering outside the room where they'd been keeping Rick. What if they'd caught up with him, what if - but most of those guys are here.   
  
"Rick Grimes saved my life over and over," Carol says next. Her arms are tucked across her chest and somehow she looks smaller. Fragile. "There's terrifying people out there." He thinks of Carol rescuing them from Terminus covered in blood, of her killing Karen and David. "And he rescued me from them. People like me, people like us -" Here Carol's hand is on his shoulder, and Daryl bites his lip and looks down. Should he try and look weak? He doesn't know if he can, so he just doesn't look at all. "We need people like him. I know what happened last night was scary. And I'm sure he's sorry for that. But maybe we should listen to what he was saying."  
  
Daryl's listening - to everyone, to Abraham, to Aaron, to Eugene, to Maggie.   
  
"My father respected Rick Grimes," she says and he sees Beth next to her, hair shining in the dark, and he bites the inside of his cheek, hard.   
  
For a minute Daryl wonders if that will be enough - the tide feels like it's turned, a low rumble Daryl can't hear but can feel. Maybe it's enough. Maybe people don't care what Rick did as long as he won't do it to them -  
  
But then Deanna's stepping forward again and of course she doesn't fight fair. "Before we hear from anyone else, I would like to share something in the spirit of transparency." Daryl watches her thumbs tap together, once, and he hates her. "Father Gabriel came to see me the day before yesterday and he said our new arrivals can't be trusted, that they were dangerous, that they would put themselves before this community. And not one day later, Rick seemed to demonstrate all the things Father Gabriel said. I had hoped Gabriel would be here tonight."  
  
Of course he had. Fucking preacher.   
  
Jessie speaks for the first time. "I don't see him here, Deanna. So you're just saying what someone said. Did you tape him?"  
  
Daryl's glad at first that she's speaking up, but then he's worried. He doesn't think Deanna's lying - sounds exactly like something the preacher would say. What if she does have tape and she whips it out and then -

But Deanna just frowns.   
  
"He's not here," Maggie says fiercely, and Deanna meets her gaze head on.   
  
"Neither is Rick."  
  
Where is Rick? This isn't like him. To be late, to miss something important. Daryl shifts in his seat.   
  
"I'll go find 'im," he says, but Maggie shakes her head and steps past him.   
  
"I will. Excuse me."   
  
And she's gone.   
  
Daryl can feel Carol's eyes on him. This is the time to talk, probably. Everyone is thinking Rick's some kind of monster, ready to slit their throats in the night, someone even a preacher says is bad. He knows he should but his throat is tight and he feels his hands clenching into fists, the nails biting into his palm. He's no good at this, at words, at convincing.   
  
He opens his mouth and nothing comes out. He licks his lips and tries again.   
  
"Quiet," Jessie says, and he drops his head before he realizes that she's not talking to him. "Daryl's trying to say something."  
  
All their eyes are on him and he feels trapped. He swallows and he feels Carol's hand on his shoulder.   
  
"It's all right," she says, and he doesn't know if she's saying he'll be all right or if she's saying that he should stop talking because he's fucking it up.

"Rick - Rick let me stay with them after my dad -" No, that's not what he wants to say. What if they ask what happened to his dad? What if they find out that Rick made his dad cut off his own hand on a rooftop before anything really bad had gone down? He tries again. "I -"  
  
"Daryl?" Fuck Deanna. She's looking at him with that same fake patience, pretending to hear him out, like she knows he can't talk worth shit and now -  
  
"Rick din't do nothin' he din't need to do," Daryl stumbles out. "Pete was -"  
  
"We're not talking about Pete," Deanna says smoothly. "We're talking about the incident with the gun."  
  
"He wouldn'a needed that gun if y'all'd taken care of Pete yourselves," Daryl snarls, and the temperature changes. "Y'all tryin' to keep things easy'n pretend like -"  
  
"That's enough," Deanna says.   
  
"Daryl," someone says behind him.   
  
"Rick's right, y'all just sit," Daryl spits out. "Rick don't sit on shit, he never -" Daryl feels all twisted up inside, like his tongue is choking him. "Like y'all think bein' normal is better'n - "  
  
"That's enough, I said," Deanna says firmly. "You've been heard."  
  
"Naw 'cause y'all don't listen," Daryl snarls. "Sam asked for a fuckin' gun for hisself because none of y'all wanted to get your hands dirty. Rick won't never jus' sit by an' -" He remembers Rick looking at him at the side of the road, Will Dixon glowering behind him. _You do not have to go with him._ "Yeah whatever, that's normal, fuckin' ignorin' what people do to each other, fuckin' leavin' kids -" Because sure, a few teachers had tried to ask questions, but when Merle was getting tossed in juvie every other weekend bleeding no one ever asked him nothing. Teacher's stopped looking close when he wasn't little and cute anymore. His dad's friends, people in town, everyone knew Will Dixon was trash, was a mean drunk, was trouble, and they'd left Merle and him there to rot because that's how the world worked. Rick's not going to let it work like that anymore. "If y'ain't gonna protect your own people, what's he supposed to do?"  
  
There's a bitter, brittle silence. He feels Jessie's eyes on him and he ducks his head and scowls, shoulders tight. He fucked that up. He didn't say any of the shit he meant to, he didn't tell them a story like Carol said, and he got mad and he swore and that's not going to help their case at all. He fucked that up and now - 

But then Rick is there, finally, and Daryl's relieved until he registers the blood splattered all over him, the walker thrown over his shoulder. 

Rick says it all better than Daryl could, the words that slither and slip in Daryl's brain coming out of Rick in one long clear breath. 

"You're not ready. But you have to be, right now, you have to be. Luck runs out," he says finally. 

Reg proves that point almost immediately. Choking on his own blood, Deanna keening over him, the most human she's looked. Rick standing there as Pete writhes around on the ground.  
  
"Do it," Deanna says. 

And Rick does.   
  
And then it's quiet except for the crackling of flames.

* * *

"Sorry," Daryl says to Carol later. The house feels weirdly empty - everyone off doing different tasks. Burying Reg, visiting Tara, Glenn all beat up somehow, Rick who knows where. Even Carl is missing.  
  
"For what?" Carol says. They're in the kitchen - he misses the snores and grunts and breathing of the others, a sound as familiar now as his own heartbeat. The only thing in the house is silence.  
  
"I didn't - I ain't good. At talking."  
  
"You did great."   
  
Daryl scoffs.   
  
"It isn't over," Carol says. "Deanna might be on our side now, but the others - " Carol purses her lips. "We've still got a ways to go."  
  
"Think they're okay?"  
  
Carol knows he's talking about Jessie. She hesitates, then nods. "They will be."  
  
Daryl bites at the side of his thumb. Remembers the feeling walking away from his dad, his face turned to pulp, seeing Carol bash Ed's brains in. But he remembers the feeling too, of finding out Rick'd abandoned his dad on that roof. He wonders what Sam's thinking right now. If he's sleeping in his own bed tonight or if he's locking himself in his stupid closet. 

He wonders where Ron is. 

"Hey." Daryl looks up at her. She's looking seriously at him. "It was a big ask tonight. And you came through. You did."  
  
He shrugs. Guesses it's a moot point anyway. Rick took care of it himself, he didn't need any help from Daryl.   
  
"We're doing okay, right?" Carol asks. And Daryl thinks about it. Are they?  
  
They're alive and together and at least for one more night, they've got a roof over their heads and food in their stomach.   
  
"Yeah," he says finally. "We're doin' a'right."

Still. There's a long way between all right and good.   
  
Daryl wonders if they'll ever make it there. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> End of Season 5! Some things from the end of the season have gotten shifted to the start of season six. Updates are slowing down because America is a trash fire, but I'm still plugging away at this!


End file.
